by Cameron Lowe
Their first taste of adulthood came in the living room of her parents’ house.
* * *
“You broke Calvin’s heart!” Daphne wailed. “He called here and apologized to us. To us! We had to hear it from him, not even our own d-d-da…”
Malcolm and Gwen sat together on the edge of the Caplans’ couch, his hand squeezing hers while she clenched a tissue with the other.
Elliot paced the floor. In the time he’d known the man and in the decade and a half to come, Malcolm never heard him blaspheme – Elliot was a curser but he never once took the Lord’s name in vain. Now, though, he muttered “Jesus Christ” like he was holding a machine gun and the Holy Trinity was his ammunition.
“Calvin is a good man,” Gwen said. “But we were headed for a breakup for a while, Mom.”
“So you cheat on him with this… this… clerk?” Elliot asked, sneering.
“Hey,” Malcolm protested.
“I never once cheated on Calvin. Not once. I broke up with him when I heard Malcolm broke up with his girlfriend because I knew this was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.”
“After five minutes leaving Calvin,” Elliot snapped. “You ‘knew.’” He waggled two fingers in the air like quotation marks. “Gwen, you’ve done some dumb things-”
“All right, that’s enough,” Malcolm said. “She did nothing wrong here.”
“How are you going to provide for her?” Elliot shouted. “How are you two going to live? Because I guarantee you it won’t be here. Not ever. You had a good thing, Gwennie.”
“He doesn’t have to provide for me, Dad. We-” Gwen snarled the “we” and Malcolm smiled “-will provide for each other. We’ll figure this out. We will find a way.”
“What are your ambitions, son? What’s your plan? What are you going to do in life? Huh?” Elliot said, and Daphne cried even harder, if that was possible.
Malcolm opened his mouth, closed it again, and muttered, “I… uh…”
“Guys like this are always going to be minimum-wage shitheads,” Elliot said, pointing at Malcolm as though there could be any sort of confusion as to who he was talking about. “That’s who you want to spend the rest of your life with? Go ahead. But as far as I’m concerned, the both of you are on your own. I don’t want anything to do with this nightmare.” He stormed towards Malcolm, his eyes wild. “Do her a favor. Get snipped, kid. Because you make her pregnant, there’s no going back for her. She’ll be stuck with this the rest of her life.”
Malcolm shot up, coming nose to nose with Gwen’s dad. “I should be so lucky as to have kids with her. And I will do something with my life. Yeah, I don’t know what that is, yet, but I’m damn well going to make sure our kids will be taken care of. And more importantly? I’m going to love them. Because that’s what matters. Asshole.”
Daphne sucked in a breath and Elliot simply grinned. “Get. Out,” he said through gritted teeth. To his daughter, he said, “You come back when you’ve got a bit of sense in your brain. And you?” He looked at Malcolm like a rabid dog eyeing a bloody cut of steak. “You ever step foot inside this house again, I’ll kill you.”
* * *
They lay together in Nic’s bed again, Malcolm stroking her cheek as she fought down another crying jag. “They’re right,” he whispered to her.
“Don’t you say that. Don’t you ever think about leaving me.”
“No, you’re stuck with me. But we have to come up with some kind of a plan. I’ve only got a few weeks left on the lease here, Nic’s dad comes in soon, and then… we’ve got nothing.”
She nodded slowly. “I’ve got a bit of money saved. Enough maybe for an apartment.”
“I’ve got a couple hundred I can chip in. Maybe enough for a security deposit.”
They talked finances, and she realized she would have to carry them for a while. Malcolm made enough at Radio Shack to help split the cost of rent with Nic, but his former roommate had paid for nearly all the other bills and day-to-day expenses.
“In all this, I haven’t asked. Are you okay? I mean, him going to jail, it’s not… going to affect you, right?”
“Are you asking if I dealt too?”
She folded her bottom lip between her teeth, and nodded. “I guess. In a way.”
“No. I didn’t deal. Not that I really wanted to. But Nic was protective. He didn’t even want me to smoke weed. Didn’t keep it in the house while I lived here, not after the first few days.”
“That’s… sweet.”
“I think he thought of me as his… hm. His old self, I guess. Someone from home who reminded him of the time before he started all this shit.”
Gwen thought about that and nodded. “Makes a certain sort of sense.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“He’s a drug dealer.”
It was an argument they’d have a lot, but in the moment, they were too blinded by new love to see that it was a rift, and a big one. He got up to pee just when the phone rang. It was Charlie, and any discussion they might have had about Nic fell by the wayside. Her older brother had stolen Malcolm’s number from Hugh, and Gwen immediately put him on speakerphone, bursting with glee.
“-so he’d better know I’ll fly an F-15 right up his ass if he starts any shit.”
“You’d better pay attention,” Gwen said, nudging Malcolm as his eyes went huge. “He’s in vehicle management. He could probably hook that up.”
“Uh, pleasure to, ah, finally talk to you, ah, sir,” Malcolm said weakly. “Thank you… for… ah, serving.”
“Is he pissing himself?” Charlie asked, a glint of good humor in his voice.
“Oh yeah.”
Charlie laughed heartily. “I’m proud of you, sis. I’m happy you finally ditched that propped-up douchebag. Malcolm, if she loves you, you make sure you love her twice as much.”
“Yeah. Yes. I can definitely do that,” Malcolm said, and pinched Gwen’s butt. She yelped, laughing.
“Looking forward to meeting you at Christmas,” Charlie said.
Gwen sobered up, and in a hurry. “You’ll be home?”
“Yes. I gotta meet this guy, right?”
“Charlie, I…” Gwen sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “I don’t…”
“What is it?” Charlie asked.
She shook her head at Malcolm, and said quietly, “I’m looking forward to it. It’s been too long.”
“Hey. Love you, little G-Unit.”
“Love you too. Talk soon.”
She hung up, and turned over so she was facing Malcolm again. She didn’t cry, but she pulled his arm around her. They stayed like that for a while, and Malcolm thought maybe she’d fallen asleep, but then she breathed, “It’s gotta be us.”
“Sorry?”
“We have to try to do this. On our own.”
He nodded. “I agree.”
“I don’t just mean with my parents. We look out for each other. We make this work. What my dad said is bullshit.”
“I’m with you.”
She stroked his chest. “When we have kids…”
“I won’t. I won’t ever do that to them. Or you.”
She nodded, and her hand slipped down to grasp him. His own went to her sex, and they helped each other that way, staring into each other’s eyes, making promises their young selves believed could never be broken.
Chapter 16
“We have three weeks and then we have to be out of there,” Gwen said to Juliet as she dropped another box onto the bed.
They were at her and Calvin’s place. Or just Calvin’s now, Gwen supposed. It didn’t hurt much to think about it that way. They’d lived here for months but it had never felt like a home to her.
“It’s one thing to have you crash on my couch, but if you’re asking if you and Malcolm can stay, I don’t know,” Juliet said hesitantly, folding clothes and stuffing them into another one of the moving boxes Malcolm had brought home when he intended on heading back to Minneapolis. They’d talked a li
ttle about moving to his hometown, but it wasn’t serious. Gwen wanted to stay in the Flats at least for now. Hugh was here, and Juliet, and though it went unspoken, she was hoping to convince her parents to come around on Malcolm and she couldn’t do that if they fled hundreds of miles away.
“I’m not asking that,” Gwen said stiffly, dragging out more of her clothes from the hamper. She’d done them the morning before Calvin broke up with her, and he hadn’t bothered folding them or hanging them for her. It looked as though he hadn’t been there much himself, given the congealed food on the plates in the sink. “If you spot somewhere that’s reasonable, though, please let me know.”
“Gwen…” Juliet said, her voice strained.
“What?”
She sighed. “Nothing.”
“If you’re going to try to talk me out of this like Mom and Dad…”
“I’m not,” Juliet said, folding another shirt. Then she threw it on the bed and muttered, “Fuck it. Yes, I am, all right? You don’t know this guy.”
“Yes I do,” Gwen said, rounding on her cousin, fury blooming red in her cheeks. “I’ve known him for months. I know he’s a good-”
“-man, yeah, yeah, I know. Do you know anything else? Something concrete? Is he… say, a Republican? Democrat? Maybe the Green Party?” Juliet held two fingers to her lips like she was puffing on a joint.
“That was his roommate, not him,” Juliet snapped.
“Okay, all I’m saying is, maybe don’t be in such a rush, you know? Give it a year. Two, maybe. Make sure he’s the right one.”
“He’s. The. Right. One,” Gwen said, gritting her teeth and clipping the words. “I love him. He loves me.”
“And he just quit his job at Radio Shack, for Pete’s sake.”
That was true. And worse, though he still had a week and a half left there, Malcolm refused to take it seriously. After he’d taken the sick day with Gwen, he’d showed up late twice thanks to their lovemaking and his inability to leave her side. She had to shove him out the door and lock it behind him one day. They had to have a talk about that sometime, but for now, Gwen was too high on him to think of it as anything but sweet.
“He’s got two interviews today, and another two tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“A couple of the stores out in the new development on Oleander, and there’s a clothing place out at Shallow Pond Mall. They have a managerial position opening up.”
“At Shallow Pond,” Juliet repeated back. “Gwen, that place is doomed. If they’re open another five years, I’d be shocked.”
Thinking of her dad spewing vitriol at Malcolm, Gwen snapped, “What do you want me to say here, Jules? Malcolm is trying. He’s a good guy. I love him. That’s enough.”
“But-”
“That’s. Enough!” Gwen shouted. “You know, I expected this shit from Dad. Even Mom. But from you? You’re supposed to be happy for me. You’re supposed to be hugging me right now and telling me how pretty I’ll look in my dress or how much you love my ring, but no, you’re probably being all judgmental because it came from a department store and we bought it on sale because all that fucking matters is that I love that man. And no one-”
Blink.
“-ey!” Juliet was inches away, but it wasn’t anger on her face. Instead, her eyes were huge, and she was snapping her fingers. “Gwen!”
“What?”
“What do you mean, what? You just went quiet and started staring at me.”
Gwen shook her head. She felt fine. What the hell was Juliet talking about? “Quit trying to change the subject.”
“I’m not sure-”
“You’re not sure about him. I get that. But have you even given him a shot?” Gwen sat down on the side of the bed, the bed she’d once loved because it was so comfy and bouncy. But it didn’t have Malcolm in it. She’d take the lumpy old mattress and box springs in Malcolm’s house every day of the week than this lifeless thing. Well… except when she slept wrong and woke up with a crick in her neck.
“I know you love him,” Juliet said, and knelt in front of Gwen, searching her eyes. “I’m sure I will too. Just give me time. And I’m sure Daphne and Elliot will come around too.”
“I hope so,” Gwen said, but in her heart, she had the despairing feeling she’d been cut out of her parents’ life.
* * *
Their life became a crash course in expectations versus reality and the pains of being young adults trying to make it on their own.
At first, they hunted for houses in the nicer suburbs. With Malcolm’s new job as a barista and Gwen’s continued work for Dr. Robertson at the vet clinic, they figured they could afford to live in a nicer area if they kept to a smaller house, just while they got on their feet. But when Gwen sat down and figured out the accounting numbers compared to what they were looking at spending in the better parts of Rankin Flats, the rent wasn’t just tight, but impossible.
That led them to search near her work in Rock Springs, since that was where the clinic was and Gwen would be the primary breadwinner for a while until they were stable enough that she could go back to college. Even those places were too expensive, and Gwen began to feel like maybe this was going to be impossible within the nicer suburbs.
They started searching deeper within the city, and came up with four distinct possibilities. Each of them was within their budget, but three were within problematic neighborhoods and the fourth had a waiting list. They signed up for it immediately, and were told it could take up to six months.
Six. Months.
The next day they set up appointments with landlords to look at the other three.
* * *
“So we’re agreed, anywhere with a junkie laying on the floor in the hallway is out,” Gwen said.
Malcolm stared over his shoulder at the building they’d just come from and grimaced. “Absolutely fine with that.”
The next apartment building was near a planned light rail system that wouldn’t actually see completion until 2016, but back then, it was an exciting development. If it was completed, they could save a ton by taking the train to the suburbs where they worked. It wasn’t all that far either from a busy commercial district and Rankin Flats Memorial, giving them great access to a downtown area of the city while not being as stab-centric as the last place they looked at.
But the Eagle Nest Apartments had problems – deep problems. Straightaway, they had to wait half an hour beyond their appointed time for the sleepy landlord, Frank, to show up, obviously fresh off an early afternoon nap. He was also given to staring at Gwen unashamedly, his beady eyes drinking in her pretty face and her curves. She made a point of staying very close to Malcolm. As for the apartment itself, it had windows that didn’t want to open thanks to a terrible paintjob. The sink dripped constantly, a problem the landlord vowed to fix with all the enthusiasm of a sloth riding a Xanax high. The toilet barely flushed, and the tub was ringed in uncleaned mold.
Someone knocked as they were looking into the kitchen, and the landlord wobbled out to greet an elderly woman, her hair resembling nothing so much like a poodle’s. “Frank, the heaters are acting up again.”
Frank, embarrassed, turned and glanced at Gwen and Malcolm. “It’s an old system. Radiator heat. Sometimes the pipes…” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence and shrugged as if this explained everything.
The woman looked past him and to the couple standing there. “Ooh, you’re a tall drink of water.”
Malcolm laughed. “Thanks.”
“Thinking about renting?”
“We are,” Gwen said, and Malcolm gave her a sharp look.
“Well, be prepared to cuss out Frank every day or he doesn’t get anything done.”
“We abide by the lease,” Frank said primly. “You know we can’t afford to fix everything.”
“Bullshit,” the old woman said, cackling. “Cleaning the apartment before it gets rented is in the contract and I can see you haven’t touched this with a mop since the Chester
fields lived here.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Sosa. I’ll look into the heat as soon as I’m done here.”
Mrs. Sosa shook her head. “No. You won’t. But don’t worry, I’ll keep on nagging.”
“This place,” Gwen whispered to Malcolm.
“Yeah?” he asked, frowning. It was definitely within their budget but…
“Listen,” she told him as the landlord escorted the woman out into the hallway.
Malcolm waited for Gwen to add something to that, but she didn’t. “Listen to what?”
“Do you hear anything?”
“No? Am I supposed to?”
She turned to him, excited. “That’s just it. This place is quiet.”
The landlord, back at the door, cleared his throat. “I should tell you that’s because this building has, ah, a certain history. Back in the late nineties, under different owners, this place used to be a… well… a whorehouse.”
“I… uhhh…” Malcolm said, scratching the back of his head.
“It’s been cleaned, I hope?” Gwen asked.
“Oh. Yes. Many times. When the new owners came in, they had the carpet torn up and replaced and… oh, you’re joking.”
“I am,” Gwen said. She took Malcolm’s arm. “We’ll take it.”
* * *
“Feels like we just did this,” Hugh grumbled.
He and Malcolm were on either end of Nic’s old couch. Malcolm, the stronger and taller of the two, was at the bottom, nudging his feet around and trying to find the next step. Vanessa stood above Hugh on the next flight, guiding them when they needed to lift or shift the couch. Further down below, safely on a lower flight where the couch – or Malcolm – couldn’t fall on her was Gwen, holding a floor lamp and a folding chair.
“Stop whining,” Gwen said. “Just a few more things and then it’s pizza time, boys.”
“Easy for you to say,” Hugh grunted as he hefted one end up and over a banister, twisting his body as he lifted and banging his elbow against the wall. “Shit, ow. You’re not the one who’s gonna wind up with a busted bone or three if this thing falls.”