by Julia Watts
“Hey, Chrystal, I need to go outside and check on Peyton,” Amber said. “You wanna come with me?”
“Sure.” It seemed a transparent ruse for a private conversation, but Chrys went along.
As soon as they were out of the kitchen, Amber whispered, “I got approved for that transfer to Nashville. I can start in October if Dustin’ll go.”
“Okay. I can talk to him tonight if I can get him alone.”
“I’ll try to make that happen,” Amber said.
Chrys couldn’t help grinning to herself. Were heterosexual relationships always so full of maneuvering and subterfuge?
Chrys’s dad and Dustin were on the porch, smoking. Peyton was in the yard, blowing soap bubbles at which one of the Chihoundhounds snapped aggressively.
“Me and your brother was just talking politics,” Daddy said. “I was telling him he needs to get out and vote in November.”
“And I was telling him it don’t matter who you vote for, they’re all bought and sold anyway.”
Chrys smiled. “What was it Gore Vidal said? ‘By the time a man gets to be Presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.’ What I don’t agree with Daddy about is who the lesser of those two evils would be.”
“Well, I ain’t voting for anybody who’s gonna take away my guns,” Daddy said.
Chrys suppressed an eye roll. “Daddy, the guns you have are for hunting deer, and nobody wants to take those away from you.”
“They might not be just for deer,” Daddy said. “If somebody was prowling around this house of a night, I’d shoot ’em and drag ’em into the house before I called the law.”
“I’ll bear that in mind the next time Nanny sends me down here in the middle of the night because she’s out of Pepto-Bismol,” Chrys said.
“Hey, Dustin,” Amber said, like she’d been waiting a while to get a word in, “would you run over to the trailer and get those new pictures of Peyton for your mother and daddy? Chrystal, you can go, too, and see that…that thing I was telling you about.”
“Okay,” Chrys said, though she was sure Dustin knew he was being set up.
When Chrys and Dustin walked past Peyton, she said, “If you’re going to the house, bring me a Popsicle.”
“What does Barney say the magic word is?” Dustin said.
“Please!”
“I can’t believe my badass brother just quoted Barney the dinosaur,” Chrys said.
Dustin shrugged. “Hey, whatever it takes. If a purple dinosaur tells her to do something, she’s more likely to do it than if I tell her.”
Dustin had bought the used trailer cheap through a classified ad in the local paper, and while it was in good condition, it showed its age. For one thing, unlike more contemporary trailers, it wasn’t built to resemble a house on the outside. It was metal, flat-roofed, and as rectangular as if it had been connected to the cab of an 18-wheeler. On the inside its age showed through stylistic elements—the dark, fake wood paneling, the kitchen cabinets with simulated carved details and ornate brass handles—all clearly set the time of the trailer’s manufacture sometime in the early eighties. Amber had obviously tried to give the place her own touch, with pictures of Peyton and a couple of those Anne Geddes prints of babies sleeping in big fake flowers, but the look of the trailer was so dated it made Amber’s efforts seem anachronistic. The paneled walls cried out for a macrame owl.
“What was it you was wanting to see?” Dustin asked.
Chrys saw no reason to keep up a ruse that had been so half-assed in the first place. “Nothing. I promised Amber I’d try to talk to you.”
Dustin shook his head, half-grinning. “Well, I walked right into this one, didn’t I?”
“Yep. Railroaded by devious women.”
“The story of my life. Well, we might as well sit down.”
Chrys sat down next to Dustin on an old couch Amber had disguised with a blue and white checked slipcover.
“This is about Amber wanting to move, ain’t it?”
“What are you, some kind of a mind reader?”
“Don’t have to be a mind reader the way she’s been dropping hints.” Dustin shook a Marlboro out of the pack and lit it.
“She really wants this chance, Dustin. And she’s talented enough that she just might make it. Being young and pretty won’t hurt either.”
Dustin squinted through his cigarette smoke. “All my life I’ve heard people talking about how they was gonna get out of this place and do wonders and shit thunders. Do you know how many of them actually did what they said they was gonna do?”
Chrys shook her head.
“One. And that was you. The rest of them was all talk and never made it over the county line. Or else they went off for a while but then come back home on the bus, flat broke.”
Chrys knew there were lots more people than her who had gone on to succeed outside the area, but she also knew Dustin was utterly convinced by his own anecdotal evidence. “Well, at least they tried.”
“They tried and they failed,” Dustin said. “But you know what? If you never try, you never fail. That even worked for me in high school. I never tried, but they passed me along anyway, and I ended up getting the same high school diploma you busted your ass for.”
“Sad but true,” Chrys said. “I understand that you’ve always kept your expectations and responsibilities low, Dustin. But how low are you willing to go? Your unemployment’s going to run out soon, and what kind of job opportunities are you going to have around here? Stocking shelves at Walmart for minimum wage and no benefits?”
“You think Nashville’d be better? Things is bad all over, Sissy.”
“I know, but a big city does mean more jobs and more opportunities. There’d be opportunities for Peyton there, too. Good schools, extracurricular activities—”
“And drugs and gangs and violence. A big city means more bad people. I can’t take Peyton away from her home and her grandparents. Here I know I can keep her safe.”
It never failed to amaze Chrys how hard people clung to the illusion of safety. “What, and there aren’t bad people and drugs here, too? Weren’t you telling me the other night at the bar about how many friends you’d lost to meth or Oxy? This place isn’t safe either; it’s just familiar. I don’t think you’re scared for Peyton, Dustin. I think you’re scared for yourself.”
“All right.” Dustin stood up. “I reckon you can tell Amber you gave me my talking-to. I’m gonna get Peyton a Popsicle.”
Chrys got up, too. As they left the trailer, she said, “Remember Amber wanted you to bring those pictures.”
Dustin shut the door behind him. “She can get them herself.”
Chapter Thirteen
Chrys had worried that the ride to Knoxville might be full of awkward conversational gaps. But she and Dee had immediately fallen into comfortable conversation about books and movies and music which had carried them across the state line and into the outskirts of Knoxville.
The restaurant Chrys had chosen was quirky, and she hoped Dee would appreciate it. There were hipper, more expensive sushi places downtown, but the Asia Café had its own un-self-conscious charm. It wasn’t hip; it was weird. Located on the south side of town, its clientele included Asian families ordering whole fish and hot pots, white working-class families eating sweet-and-sour whatever with fried rice and egg rolls, and burly bikers who availed themselves of the ninety-nine-cent Dragon Drafts at the bar. The décor was old-school Chinese restaurant kitsch, with lots of high-fiving cat figurines and red paper lanterns. The menu ran the gamut from Chinese and Chinese-American to Thai, Malaysian and Japanese. Everything was delicious.
Even though Meredith had admitted the food was good, she hated the Asia Café and preferred the dimly lit, sleek downtown places. (She had been particularly traumatized during a visit to Asia Café where a trio of drunken bikers had done a karaoke version of “Sweet Home Alabama.”) Chrys wondered if part of the reason she was bringing Dee here was a personality test to make
sure she was not like Meredith.
Once they walked in, the pretty hostess said, “Long time, no see.”
“I know. I’ve been away for the summer at a place where there’s no Asian food,” Chrys said.
“Oh, we have to fix that, then,” the hostess said, grabbing two menus and leading them to a red vinyl booth.
“Okay, I love this place already,” Dee said. Her light blue off-the-shoulder top complemented her eyes. “It’s so welcoming, and I was scoping out what people are eating, and it all looks great.”
A young waiter with a scraggly beard and multiple piercings came by and said, “What can I get y’all to drink tonight?” While the restaurant’s owners and chef were indeed Asian, most of the wait staff came from no farther east than east Tennessee.
“I’ll have a Sapporo, please,” Chrys said.
“Make that two,” Dee said, then she grinned at Chrys and said, “Let’s order a whole ocean’s worth of sushi.”
They just about did. The black lacquered plates spread out before them with delicate fish slices, neatly packed rolls, and dollops of electric green wasabi.
Chrys popped a tuna roll into her mouth, and its taste was bright and clean. “I don’t think I could ever talk Nanny into trying sushi,” she said. “I made tacos from a mix one night, and it was just about too adventurous for her.”
“Is there any kind of sushi you won’t eat?” Dee asked, picking up a chunk of yellowtail with her chopsticks. “I ask because I made the mistake of trying sea urchin roe once. Definitely an acquired taste which I have yet to acquire.”
“I draw the line at octopus. Not because I find it gross but because octopi are too damn smart. Did you know that an octopus is capable of crawling up on land, finding a coconut shell, and taking it down into the ocean and making a house out of it? I refuse to eat any animal that may be smarter than I am.”
Dee laughed. “I seriously doubt an octopus is smarter than you are.”
“Maybe not. But it definitely would be smarter than some of my students.”
A small stage was set up by the bar, and a squat fifty-something man in a sequined jumpsuit unceremoniously stepped up on it.
Dee leaned forward. “You see the Elvis guy, right? I mean, I’m not having a sushi-induced hallucination, am I?”
Chrys laughed. “No. He performs here pretty regularly. He calls himself Bobby the King. He’s married to the hostess. He met her when he was in the service.”
The squatty Elvis flipped on the karaoke machine and launched into a spirited version of “Burning Love,” punctuated by karate kicks.
“You know, he’s not bad,” Dee said, reaching for a piece of dragon roll.
“No, he’s pretty good, actually, even if he’s seen a few more birthdays than the King ever did.” Chrys felt that Dee had passed another unwritten test. When she and Meredith had eaten here for the third and final time and Bobby the King had taken the stage, Meredith had said she was “embarrassed for him.”
The next number was “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” On the song’s first line “Wise men say only fools rush in,” Chrys had the same thought she always did when she heard the song: how strange it was that a song popularized by a folk hero like Elvis contained a quote from long-dead snob Alexander Pope. But as the song’s words melted over her, she stopped thinking and started feeling.
More than she heard the music or tasted the hot wasabi and the cold beer, she felt Dee across from her—Dee with her honey-wheat hair down on her golden shoulders, Dee who was caring, Dee who was funny, Dee who was smart but didn’t make a big deal of it. Chrys knew all the reasons it was dangerous to feel this way—she was still hurting from Meredith, she had no reason to think Dee had ever been anything but straight, she was in all likelihood setting herself up for more pain in the near or distant future—but she couldn’t help it. Sitting across from Dee, with Bobby the King crooning in the background, she was like that little hen she had hypnotized, unable to look back or away, mesmerized by what was in front of her.
* * *
The atmosphere at Shakespeare on the Square was always a little chaotic. There were always quite a few people—college and high school kids and families out for some culture—who brought their folding chairs or blankets and settled in to watch the play. But since the square was full of restaurants and bars, there were also plenty of diners and drinkers wandering about, often talking over the play as they walked, and panhandlers who sometimes watched the play but mostly solicited donations from the audience. Since the original Shakespeare productions had also been in an outdoor venue, Chrys wondered if Elizabethan actors had had to compete with a similar level of chaos.
In terms of talent, the Shakespeare on the Square productions were kind of a mixed bag. The cast always included some talented regional actors like Aaron, but there were also high school kids, retirees, and a couple of rich dilettantes who helped bankroll the production. The Titania in this show, with her Botoxed complexion and perfectly highlighted hair, clearly fell into the dilettante camp, whereas the scenery-gnawing Oberon screamed retired high school drama coach. At first Chrys thought the talented teen actor playing Puck was a pretty boy but was delighted to learn it was actually a boyish girl.
Aaron was hilarious as Bottom, especially in the scene where he’d been turned into an ass, and Titania, enchanted by Puck to fall in love with the first creature she sees upon waking, swoons over his beauty. During the curtain call, he got one of the loudest rounds of applause.
Backstage, Chrys and Aaron ran into each other’s arms. “I’ve missed you like crazy, honeybun!” he said.
“You too.” Chrys’s eyes were misty. “You did great up there.”
“Thanks. I love doing comedy. Laughs are such instant gratification.” He shifted his gaze. “Oh, you must be Dee. Come here and give me a hug. Handshakes are for trained dogs.”
As Dee and Aaron hugged hello, Chrys noticed the actress who played Hippolyta holding hands with Puck. “Backstage romance?” she asked.
“Yeah, aren’t they the cutest?” Aaron said.
“Too bad Hippolyta’s not with a woman in the play, too,” Chrys said. “I mean, she’s the queen of the Amazons. Why the fuck does she want to marry a dude?”
The beautiful young man with a toasted-almond complexion who’d played Lysander joined them, and Aaron said, “Ooh, speaking of backstage romances, this is Jerell. Jerell, this is my friend Chrys and her friend Dee.”
Jerell, who apparently didn’t share Aaron’s opinion that handshakes were for trained dogs, offered his hand to each of them and said, “I’m really disappointed I can’t hang out with y’all tonight, but I’ve got another show to do.”
“Are you in another play?” Dee asked.
Jerell smiled. “No, I do drag over at the XYZ. Y’all should come see me sometime.”
“Definitely,” Chrys said.
* * *
Back at his apartment, Aaron set a bottle of red wine and a plate of cheese and crackers on the coffee table. “Don’t be shy about the wine. There’s plenty more.”
“You’re such a bad influence on me,” Chrys said.
“And you love it.” Aaron filled their glasses. “Nobody has any responsibilities until tomorrow, right? We might as well indulge.” He handed Dee a glass. “Are you okay? You’re wearing this look like, ‘Toto, I don’t believe we’re in Kentucky anymore.’”
Dee laughed. “I think I’m experiencing a very pleasant form of culture shock.”
Chrys wondered what Dee meant—culture shock from moving from a rural setting to an urban one? Or culture shock from moving in such obviously gay circles? Instead of asking, she said to Aaron, “So Jerell is even more beautiful than you said he was.”
“Well, words were inadequate. He’s a beautiful person, too, not just on the outside. But when the outside matches the inside, you won’t hear me complain.” He sipped his wine.
“Are things getting serious?” Chrys asked.
“Well, y
ou know how it is with us boys. We don’t get too serious too soon. The first priority is to get the sex down pat, and once we do that, we try other things. Like talking.” He reached out and touched Dee’s hand. “I’m exaggerating, of course. Jerell and I do talk a lot. And I really like him. But he’s going into his last year in the MFA program, and after that, he wants to try things in New York. So I don’t know. I certainly wouldn’t ask somebody to derail his career for a relationship with me.” He nudged Chrys. “My name’s not Meredith.”
“Thank God,” Chrys said.
“What do you mean?” Dee asked.
Chrys curled her feet under her on the couch. “When I met Meredith, I was an associate professor at Western Carolina State. I was right on track in my academic career. But I left rank and tenure and slid way down the academic food chain to be with her. And a few years later, she left me.”
“Anna’s dad left me,” Dee said. “He’d left every other woman he’d ever been with, so I don’t know why I thought I’d be any different.” She drained her wineglass. “Sometimes I think there are two kinds of people: the leavers and the left. I know which kind I am.”
“Me too,” Chrys said. Meredith had been the worst leaver, but not the first.
“Me three,” Aaron said. “Shit, I’d better find out which kind Jerell is.”
“I wonder,” Chrys said, the wine starting a pleasant buzz in her brain, “if two people who aren’t leavers get together, if that means nobody ever leaves. They stay.”
“That would be nice,” Dee said.
“Things are getting entirely too philosophical in here,” Aaron said. “I’d better get us another bottle of wine.”
“I’m so glad you invited me this weekend,” Dee said. “Between working and being a single parent, I don’t get many chances to let my hair down.”
Before Chrys could think of a response, Aaron swept in with a new bottle and said, “Well, we let it all hang out here. Curtains, carpet, you name it.”
The second bottle of wine sent them into silliness, and after much giggling and guzzling, Aaron stretched—a bit theatrically, Chrys thought—and said, “Well, I think it’s time for me to go night-night. I’ll make you one of my famous breakfasts before you head out in the morning.”