Why We Broke Up

by Daniel Handler

  “What about that other line, the something route, over here?”

  “Oh yeah. The 6 it is, I think. Like here, and then here.”

  We looked at it. “Will your sister,” I said—

  “No way. She never lets me drive any night when anyone might be drinking. And let’s face it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. The lines were straighter than anyone would be going that night. “Hey, the 6 ends up here, this end of Dexter, right?”

  “Oh yeah. I remember from going out with Marjorie.”

  “She lives out here?”

  “No, she took ballet at the weird place around here.”

  “So,” I said, taking your pen and dotting it out, “we start at your Bash, sneak out this way, probably where people will think we’re just going to fool around.”

  “Which we will,” you said, taking it back, marking an X which I blushed at and ignored.

  “And then we take the bus here and get off here and refortify at In the Cups. I can’t draw a cup. Then walk whatever it is, eight blocks, dot dot dot, and catch the 6 and stop here. And then we walk across and we’re at the Ball. Voilà!”

  You blinked at me, didn’t voilà! back. My dotted lines all over your neatness. “Across the cemetery at night?”

  “You’ll be safe,” I said. “You’ll be with the co-captain of the basketball team, oh wait, that’s me.”

  “Not safety,” you said. “Oh, forget it,” and I remembered what’s famous about the cemetery, or famous isn’t the word, but why nobody hangs out there. Every place has them, I guess, a park or place where men go at night to do it to each other secret in the dark.

  “We’ll keep our eyes closed,” I said, “so the gay won’t be catching.”

  “If I can’t say gay you can’t.”

  “You can say gay,” I said, “when you’re actually talking about gay. And how do you even know about the cemetery thing?”

  “Tell me first how you know.”

  “I drop Al off there most nights,” I said, the joke sticking in my throat.

  You covered your face, my girlfriend is so nuts. “Well, yeah,” you tried bravely, “I see him there when I pit-stop to relieve the tension of everything but.”

  “Shut up,” I said. “You love everything but.”

  “I do,” you grinned. “Um, but speaking of. I wanted to—”

  “Yeah?”

  “My sister—”

  “Ew. Speaking of that, your sister?”

  “Stop it. She’s going away.”

  “What?”

  “For the weekend. Not next, not Halloween, but after that.”

  “And?”

  “And my mom’s not back,” you said, “so I’ll have the house. You could, you know—”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Sleep over is all I was going to say, Min.”

  “You also said there wasn’t a schedule. Just said it.”

  “There wasn’t. Isn’t. But I just—”

  “I don’t want to lose my virginity in your bed,” I said.

  You sighed at the napkin. “Do you mean that, like, not in my bed or not with me?”

  “Just the actual bed,” I said. “Or your car or a park. Somewhere, you’ll laugh, somewhere extraordinary.”

  You did, I’ll give you that Ed, not laugh. “Extraordinary.”

  “Extraordinary,” I said.

  “OK,” you said, and then smiled. “Tommy and Amber lost it in her dad’s warehouse.”

  “Ed.”

  “They did! Between two refrigerators!”

  “Not that kind of—”

  “I know, I know. Don’t worry, Min. It’s not the cuckoo thing you thought I said, unavoidable. I want you to be, I can’t find the word I mean.” You sighed again. “Happy. Which is why we’re going to take two buses and walk through a gay place Halloween night.”

  I couldn’t decide about that gay, let it slide. “We’ll have fun,” I lied.

  “Maybe the following weekend we will,” you said shyly, and right then I wanted to, an eager hunger in my mouth and my lap. I had such a feeling. Fill it with something else instead, I thought, but what I didn’t know.

  “Maybe,” I said finally.

  “This is complicated,” you said, back on the napkin, and then looked at me. You wanted to pry me open, I could see it, drag me across our boundaries so we could feast together in secret from the rest of the world. “But,” you said, “no, not but. I love you.”

  Coffee, I thought, was what. “Let’s drink to it,” I said.

  “Life-giving brew,” you agreed, all energy and spiky delight. You waved for the waitress, started to crumple our plan.

  “Wait, wait.”

  “What?”

  “I want that. Don’t shred our plan.”

  “We’ll remember it without it.”

  “I still want it.”

  “You’re not,” you said, “going to tell Al or somebody that I make these I-won’t-say-it charts.”

  “I will not,” I said in a sad promise, “tell Al. It’s just for me.”

  “Just for you?” you said. “OK.” You hunched over for a sec while I ordered the coffee, ignoring the looks of the waitress looking at you. You handed it to me, but I’d already grabbed what I wanted, thefted again at Lopsided’s, distracted you with chatter until the coffee came and you forgot it was gone. But you put one over on me, too, the other side of the napkin I discovered too late, not when I got home, not when I dropped it into the box, only heartbroken and weepy when it wasn’t true anymore. Just like we discovered as the waitress plunked down coffee and the bill and stalked off that there wasn’t any sugar at our table: when it was too late, Ed, to do any good.

  This is what I stole. Here’s it back. I thought, my goddamn ex-love, that it was cute that you carried this around to help you map out your thinking. Cute in your pocket all the time. I’m not a cuckoo, either. I’m a fool is what.

  And you never saw this, either. I stood alone with it in my hands in Green Mountain Hardware, quiet and lonely and trying to conjure Al beside me so I could ask him things only he could know. Is this really a file, like a file they use in We Break at Dawn or Fugitives by Moonlight to run free with the dogs after them and the barbed wire silhouetted against the floodlights? Al and I had seen that double feature as part of the Carnelian’s Prison Week, which hilariously concluded with the Meyers documentary on boarding schools. The theater was almost empty that day, who in the world else could I ask? The Green Mountain staff in their vests and headsets cannot be asked, Is this metal file oven-safe? Picturing us, you and me, in an accidental iron-poisoning suicide pact from the surprise I wanted us to share. I wanted so badly to call Al and say “I know we’re mad at each other forever maybe, but could you just tell me this one single thing about metal and cooking?” but of course not. Joan, I thought, I could ask Joan maybe, and then she came around the corner.

  “Hey, Min.”

  “Annette, hi.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Halloween shopping,” I said, holding up the file.

  “Wow, me too,” she said. “I need chains. Come with?”

  We walked toward where they were, a row of shiny wheels you could unwind and buy by the yard. Annette eyed through them like it was real jewelry, stopping to lay her whole bare arm against them. “What are you going to be?” I asked her.

  “I’m trying to see how they feel,” she said. “I don’t know, it’s kind of a medieval thing I’m doing with someone. You know, but slinky.”

  Slutty, is what I thought. All the girls who date athletes are slutty in their costumes, slutty witch, slutty cat, slutty hooker.

  “Can I wear these with no bra, do you think?”

  “Really?” I tried not to squeal.

  “I mean, wrapped around like a tube top kind of. I’m not that big.”

  “I think you’ll be bruised by the end of the night,” I said.

  She turned to glare. “Are you threatening me?” she s
aid.

  “What? No!”

  “Kidding, Min. Kidding. Ed told me he’s the one who doesn’t get your jokes. Criminy, as he would say.”

  “Criminy,” I agreed dumbly.

  “What’s that thing for?”

  “I haven’t decided really,” I said. “I was thinking, you know how Ed’s a prisoner?”

  “The chain gang, yeah.”

  “Well, you know how in old prison movies they bake a file in a cake? You know, to saw away the bars or something. Like a loyal wife helping, keeping the car running outside the back entrance.”

  She looked dubiously at the file. “You’re Ed’s wife for Halloween?”

  She was smiling, but it was like she’d dumped a sack of stupid on my head. I felt slovenly with her glittered eyes on me, moronic in fat pants and shoes. “No,” I said. “I was just going to make him a cake to get him in the mood that day.”

  “As I remember, he’s always in the mood,” Annette said, with a little smile.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. So what are you going to be really?”

  “The warden,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Like, in charge of the prison?”

  “Oh yeah. Cool.”

  “It’s lame I know, but I have this coat of my dad’s to wear.”

  “Cool,” she said again, unraveling her choice.

  “I couldn’t, you know. I’m not the type for, like, the sexy costume.”

  She paused and really looked me over, probably for the first time I thought. “You totally are, Min. It’s just—” and she bit her lip like never mind.

  “What?”

  “Well, you’re, I know you’re going to hate this.”

  “What?”

  “Um—”

  “You’re going to say arty.”

  “I’m saying what Ed is always saying. You’re different, you don’t need to do this kind of thing.” She held up the chain scornfully. “You have a body, you do, you’re beautiful and everything. But then you have everything else too. That’s why everyone’s jealous of you, Min.”

  “They’re not jealous.”

  “Yes,” she said almost angrily to the chains. “They are.”

  “Well, if they’re jealous, it’s just because I’m with Ed Slaterton, it’s not because of me,” I said.

  “That is why,” she said, and shook her hair. “But it’s you who got him.” She nodded at my file. “You’d better carry a weapon Saturday night. All the girls will be vampire Cleopatras trying to claw him away from you.”

  She laughed and I decided to laugh too. Kidding, I said to myself, and then out loud, “Catfight. The boys will love that, girl on girl.”

  “We could charge admission,” she said, pretending to claw at me. “You ready to go?”

  I’d decided, absolutely, not to buy this stupid file. I followed her to the cash register with it in my hands while she bubbled her way with the cashier, who snipped the chain and gave her a discount. Mine gave me my change and a receipt.

  “You want to go get a juice or something dumb like that?”

  “No, thanks,” I said, following her out. “I gotta go home and do the rest of the costume.”

  “You didn’t freak out about what I said about Saturday, did you? It was a joke.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, sort of a joke,” she said with a smile, switching hands with the bag of chains. “I mean, everybody knows he’s yours.”

  “Not Jillian.”

  “Jillian’s a bitch,” she said, too fiercely.

  “Whoa.”

  “Long story, Min. But don’t worry about her.”

  I looked sadly out at the wet traffic. It had been raining, my Jewish hair a hideous cloud of pollution, and it was going to rain some more. I felt unshielded there outside Green Mountain, sensitive as a match flame, a lost baby something in the streets, without a mother or a collar or a cardboard box to call home. “I worry about everyone,” I said, why not let out the honest answer. “Different, everyone keeps saying different. He’s mine now but you’re right, someone could take him. I’m like an outsider to everyone else he knows.”

  She didn’t bother saying I was wrong. “No,” she said. “He loves you.”

  “And I love him,” I said, though what I wanted to say was thank you. I thought, the idiot that I was, the fool with a file in a bag, that she was looking out for me.

  “And love, who can say the way it winds,” she recited, “like a serpent in the garden of our untroubled minds.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Salleford,” she said. “Alice Salleford. Sophomore English. And I thought you were the arty one.”

  “I’m not arty,” I said.

  “Well, you’re something,” she said, and gave me a quick hug good-bye, rattly with chains. Sure enough it started to rain. She dashed from awning to awning and gave me a wave before disappearing. Beautiful she was, beautiful in the rain and her clothing. The file clanked against me, my stupid idea nobody would have gotten had I ever done it. You even wouldn’t have gotten it, Ed, I thought, watching her go. It’s why we broke up, so here it is. Ed, how could you?

  This isn’t yours. It was left in an envelope taped to my locker, my name not even written on it. I thought it was something from you, but it just dropped into my hand, no note. I felt Al’s anger, sulky, honorable, goddamn furious in my hands as I held this. My free ticket, earned by helping him tape up posters. Goddamn subcommittee. He could have made me buy one, but instead there it was, a ticked-off gift. It’s not yours, but I’m giving it back to you because it’s your fault. The drama clubbers have these fancy tokens made instead of tickets so you can wear them around your neck all year if you’re extra goth embarrassing to prove you went to the All-City All Hallows’ Ball. I never keep mine, just shove them in a drawer or whatever. HOPE, what a laugh. It’s a reminder of the night, let’s admit it now together—Halloween of Pure Evil—the night we should have broken up.

  So why did we break up? When I think of it now, think of it really, I think of how tired I was Halloween Saturday, from getting up early to sneak off to Tip Top Goods myself to buy these, which I never gave you. Yawning outside later, spray-painting an old thrift-store cap I used to wear freshman year, squinting at the gray to see if it matched my dad’s coat, Hawk Davies floating out my bedroom window to bask all over me, that cool part of “Take Another Train” when he polishes off a solo and you hear someone’s faint cry of appreciation, Yeah Hawk yeah while I grinned in the clear air. It wasn’t going to rain out. You and I were going to the Bash and the Ball and it would be OK—extraordinary, even. I had no feeling of otherwise. I can see my happiness, I can see it and I can say that we were happy too then, not just me. I guess I can cling to anything.

  “It’s good to see you happy,” my mom said, coming out with steaming tea. I’d been coiled up thinking she was telling me the jazz was too loud, think of the neighbors.

  “Thanks,” I said for the Earl Grey.

  “Even if it is in your father’s coat,” she said, this year’s thing of deciding it was OK to talk crap about Dad.

  “Just for you, Mom, I’ll try to ruin it tonight.”

  She laughed a little. “How?”

  “Um, I’ll spill drugs on it and roll around in the mud.”

  “When am I going to meet this boy?”

  “Mom.”

  “I just want to meet him.”

  “You want to approve him.”

  “I love you,” she tried like always. “You’re my only daughter, Min.”

  “What do you want to know?” I said. “He’s tall, he’s skinny, he’s polite. Isn’t he polite on the phone?”

  “Sure.”

  “And he’s captain of the basketball team.”

  “Co-captain.”

  “That means there’s another captain too.”

  “I know what it means, Min. It’s just—what do you have in common?”

  I took a sip o
f tea instead of clawing her eyes out. “Thematic Halloween costumes,” I said.

  “Yes, you told me. The whole team is prisoners and you’re playing along.”

  “It’s not playing along.”

  “I know he’s popular, Min. Jordan’s mother tells me this. I just don’t want you led around, like, like somebody’s goat.”

  Goat? “I’m the one being the warden,” I said. “I’m going to lead them around.” Not true, of course, but fuck her.

  “OK, OK,” my mom said. “Well, the costume’s coming along. And what are those?”

  “Keys,” I said. “You know, a warden has keys.” For some moron reason I thought I’d include her for a sec. “I thought I’d wear them on my belt, you know? And then at the end of the night I’d give them to Ed.”

  My mom’s eyes widened.

  “What?”

  “You’re going to give Ed those keys?”

  “What? It’s my money.”

  “But Min, honey,” she said, and put her hand on me. My wrists trembled to spray-paint her in the face and make her gray, although, I noticed suddenly but without surprise, she already was. “Isn’t that a little, you know?”

  “What?”

  “Symbolic?”

  “What?”

  “I mean—”

  “Ew. Like, a dirty joke? Key in the keyhole?”

  “Well, people will think—”

  “Nobody thinks like that. Mom, you’re disgusting. Seriously.”

  “Min,” she said quietly, her eyes searchlighting all over me. “Are you sleeping with this boy?”

  This boy. Goat. You’re my daughter. It was like bad food I was force-fed and couldn’t keep down. Her fingers were still on me, skittering on my shoulder like a little pair of school scissors, blunt, ineffective, useless, and not the real thing. “It is none,” I said, “none, none of your business!”

  “You’re my daughter,” she said. “I love you.”

  I walked three steps down the driveway to look at her, hands on her hips. On newspapers on the ground the hat I was going to wear. Do you know, Ed, how much it fucking punches me in the stomach that my own mother was proved right? I must have shouted something and she must have shouted something back and stomped, she must have, into the house. But all I remember is the music fading, vengefully turned down so it no longer sound-tracked the day. Fuck her, I thought. Yeah Hawk yeah. I was done anyway.