by Eli Easton
“I hear ya,” I said, though my stomach felt a wash of unease. I’d been Stan’s wingman plenty of times, and I always ended up with the less-attractive friend. Probably because I could never think of a fucking thing to say to girls.
“Hey, does my butt look big to you?” Stan asked, pushing it way out as he looked in the mirror.
I threw my towel at him and laughed. “Your mom’s making us dinner. Don’t ruin my appetite, asshat.”
* * *
Sloane
Micah checked his phone. “He says he’s hanging with Stan tonight and we should go ahead.”
Lilith put on a forced smile. “Well. He hardly gets to see Stan anymore. Can’t say I blame him.”
It was clear Micah was not as forgiving. He looked annoyed that Hank would miss out on the tree trimming, no doubt for his parents’ sake.
“Kar, if you and Micah bring in the tree, maybe Sloane will help me haul the decorations up from the basement.”
“Sure,” I said, shifting sixty pounds of bulldog from my lap so I could get off the couch. Grinch was getting me trained in the proper technique for belly rubs.
The basement was rather fascinating. The original fieldstone house had been built in 1732, so there was a huge old alcove down there that had once been the kitchen fireplace. I felt like I was in a Mel Gibson movie.
“Do your parents normally put up a tree?” Lilith asked as she stacked boxes in my arms.
“Depends on what we’re doing. If my parents are throwing a party we decorate, but if we’re going to someone else’s, or traveling, it’s minimal.”
“It is a lot of work,” Lilith agreed, digging through a stack of plastic bins. “But some of our decorations go back to my childhood and Kar’s. I can’t imagine a year without them. Now where are those bubble lights?”
We made three trips up the basement stairs, and by then Micah and his dad were rolling in a fir tree on a dolly. It was in a big red pot. I gave Micah a questioning look.
“We have a thing about killing Christmas trees,” Micah said. “So we buy them in a pot, and after Christmas we plant them on the farm.”
“We’ve got a regular fir grove on the back forty,” said Kar proudly. “You should have Micah show it to you sometime.”
“It’s a cute tree,” I said, wondering how we were going to get all those boxes of decorations on a five-foot specimen.
It turned out not to be a problem, because there were a multitude of Christmas tree-like surfaces in the house. Besides draping lights and hanging ornaments on the potted tree, which did, in fact, look rather nice with the old-fashioned ornaments on it, the Springfields also attacked all the pine boughs that were draped around the house—on the mantle, on the staircase doorway, over the hutch in the dining room—with baubles and blinkers. I thought the house had been decorated before, but by the time we were done, I was lost in Whoville.
After spending a lot of years abroad, I was ingrained with the typically European notion that Americans had to overdo everything. Everything had to be ‘Texas-sized’, including their cars, houses, meals, and waistlines. That abundance was something I adored about America, though. And I was particularly in love with it here. I loved how big all the Springfield men were. I loved the size of the Amish family. I loved the cornucopia-like bounty of pies and puppies. And I adored swimming in Christmas decorations.
“Chili, cornbread, and beer!” Lilith announced, when we’d swathed the last swath.
“Please adopt me,” I said to Micah in a deadpan voice. “I can be your long lost Albanian brother.”
Micah laughed and drew me in with an arm around my shoulder. “The downside is noogies.” He proceeded to put me in a half headlock and rub my skull vigorously with his knuckles. Ouch. But I was slippery and managed to duck away, following the smell of chili.
“I made this with tomatoes from our garden,” Lilith said proudly, stirring a big pot. “And the beef is from a steer we raised here on the farm.”
“Poor Yorick. We hardly knew ye.” Micah frowned into the pot.
Lilith shot him a warning look, which Micah ignored.
“What’s in the cornbread?” he asked, poking at an oddly pale-looking pan of the stuff.
“Almond and coconut flour, honey, and milk,” Lilith said.
“You’re the best.” Micah put his arms around his mom, who was still stirring the big pot of chili at the stove. He kissed her cheek.
“You only get lovey when I’m about to feed you,” Lilith joked, returning the hug with one hand.
Micah looked at me and winked. “Positive reinforcement. You want a brew, Gregore? We’ve got some local microbrew or my mom’s homemade kombucha.” He went to the fridge.
“Whatever you recommend. I’m all for new experiences.”
Micah handed me a cold bottle. ‘Grape kombucha’ the label said. I smirked, and when I reached out to take it, Micah met my gaze.
“That’s funny,” he said. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
* * *
After dinner, we piled into the living room to watch A Christmas Story. This was apparently a Springfield family tradition, leg lamp and all. Lilith and Karma took the sofa and Micah lounged on the floor with Cutter and Samson, insisting I take the recliner. Naturally, I had to make room for Grinch, despite Karma’s insistence that I could put him down. I’d seen the face Grinch made when I disappointed him, and I never wanted to see it again.
I was too wired for watching TV, so I checked my email on my phone, my leg bouncing Grinch’s paws up and down. I kept listening for the door and Hank coming home. And I hated myself for doing it.
When we’d decorated the mantles, family photos had been displaced. One I’d noticed earlier was now on the end table by the chair where I was sitting. I picked it up.
At first glance, I’d thought it was Micah and his mom, but now that I was studying it, I realized… it was Hank. In the picture, he was about eight years old, skinny with a big head covered with thick and floppy light brown hair. He had his arms around his mother’s neck as he stood on a bench she was sitting on. He was hugging her tight, the effort of it making a cheesy smile-grimace on his face. His blue eyes sparkled with life.
Wow. The mystery of H.S. #14. It was hard to reconcile tough, serious Hank with that carefree, affectionate little wisp of a boy.
“Sloane?” I looked up to see Lilith motioning to me. I followed her into the kitchen, leaving Micah and his father laughing at Ralphie’s narration. Grinch decided having the recliner to himself was too good to pass up, and he stretched out and watched me leave. The traitor.
“Hot cocoa?” Lilith asked me.
“God, no. My jeans are already tight.” I rubbed my leather belt, which was gasping in horror at my expanded belly.
“Well, you don’t need to worry about your weight. You look like one of those people blessed with naturally thin genes. But I won’t stuff you. What about herbal tea? Mint’s good for the tummy.”
“That sounds perfect.”
The Springfield kitchen had a big island in the middle with four stools on one side of it. I took a seat, and as I did, I realized I still had the framed photograph in my hand. I put it on the counter.
“It’s hard to believe this little monkey is Hank.”
Lilith filled a couple of mugs up with hot water and brought me one. She picked up the picture, a wistful smile on her face. “My Holden. He was always a Mama’s boy growing up.”
“Yeah? Tell me about him.” I gave her an encouraging, and I hoped irresistible, smile. Yes, I was digging in the mystery-of-Hank sandbox again, which I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do. But in my defense, it was a hell of a lot more interesting than A Christmas Story.
Lilith looked at me thoughtfully and then seemed to make up her mind. “You’re going to regret saying that, because I’ll talk you ear off. Just a minute.”
She went into the living room and returned with a photo album. She sat in the stool next to mine and cracked it open.
>
“Oh my God, you are my favorite person right now,” I said, when the first two pages showed similar bouncing-baby-boy pictures of Micah and Hank. Both of them were in blue onesies and grinning at the camera, both about six months old. “They’ll never live this down.”
Lilith laughed. “Oh, it gets better.”
It did. There was a photo of a two-year-old Micah holding baby Holden the day he came home from the hospital, looking down at him with an expression of wonder. It was so perfect, I almost said ‘I want that tattoed on my ass’, but, while Lilith seemed to find a lot of what I said funny, I thought that would be pushing it.
There were pictures of Micah and Hank being toddlers, then little boys, and lots of pictures of Hank being affectionate with his mother. The tried and true Springfield family pose seemed to be Micah hugging his dad and Hank hugging his mom and everyone smiling for the camera. There were lots of outdoor shots, and the whole family was late American hippy with long hair and loose cotton clothes.
It was an appealing picture, and it gave me a pang of loss. I suddenly missed the fact that I didn’t have a sibling. And I’d never been that close to my parents, not like the family in the photos.
“What happened to Hank?” The question was out before I really thought about it, and then I felt guilty. But looking at the pictures only confused me more. Micah was still Micah, still the boy in the photos. But other than the blue eyes, and the general shape of the face, Hank seemed nothing like this adorable boy.
A wave of pain ran over Lilith’s face, so unexpected it was like a flicker of the skull beneath the skin in a horror movie.
“Sorry. Forget I asked. It’s none of my business.”
Lilith smiled sadly. “It’s all right, Sloane. It was… well…” She turned to the back of the photo album and revealed a page. There was a single photo of Lilith in a hospital bed—emaciated, pale, sunken eyes, and a turban on her head. She smiled at the person who took the photo, someone standing at the foot of her bed. Hank and Micah stood on either side of her, looking at the camera with flat, stunned gazes.
“Holden was ten,” she said, smoothing the plastic surface of the page. “It was breast cancer. They told me I was dying. I even said good-bye to the boys. It was the worst thing you can imagine.”
I covered my mouth with my hand, overwhelmed by a sudden sorrow, black as coal. “How awful for them. How awful for all of you.”
“I survived, as you can see. I was extremely fortunate to get in on an experimental drug trial, and it pulled me back from the edge. I got a bit better, and then Kar and I did a lot of research and changed everything about how we ate. It took a long time, but I recovered.”
I couldn’t resist putting my hand over hers where it lay on the photo album and squeezing it. She turned her palm and squeezed me back. “But Holden was never the same.”
“Divorce, the death of a parent, or even a serious illness like this one—those are transformative influences on a child,” I said, to show her I understood how serious it was. “It’s not uncommon for something like that to delay or even stunt a child’s emotional development.”
Lilith raised an eyebrow at me.
I felt my cheeks warm. “Sorry. That was incredibly geeky.”
“Well, you’re right. Holden was always so open and affectionate before the cancer. He’s exceptionally bright, you see. And highly sensitive.”
I looked at her doubtfully. Was she talking about the right son?
She gave me a small smile. “He hides it well. He’s a master of disguise, my Holden. But yes. Micah graduated high school with a 3.95 GPA. And Holden, who was always competitive with his big brother, managed a 4.0. He scored in the 95th percentile on the SATs.”
“Holy…. That would explain the philosophy major then,” I mused, happy to have a few pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
Lilith rubbed her thumb over the picture, and seemed to debate with herself whether to say anything more. I definitely wanted to hear more.
“I’m going to admit something that’ll sound… weird,” I said. “Okay, very weird. But ever since I moved into the frat house, I’ve been intrigued by Hank. He’s such a walking contradiction. I’ve been trying to figure him out.”
Lilith gave me a genuine smile. “I’m glad you don’t take him at face value, Sloane. Because there’s a lot of deep water in my Holden.” She took a deep breath. “He lost faith, you see.”
“You mean, in God?”
She shook her head. “In me. In his father and me. Karma and I were big vegans before I got cancer. We were rabid about it. I was always harping on it with the boys when they were little. I thought we were so healthy, and I thought I was giving my beautiful boys the healthiest food possible and teaching them compassion in not eating or using animal products. Then, after I got sick, we did some research and found the link between soy and cancer—it wasn’t that well understood then. God, back then we had soy milk, tofu, and every other soy product you can imagine coming out of our ears. Kar found info on the Paleo lifestyle, and we decided maybe our bodies were not as spiritually advanced as our minds wanted them to be.
“I’m not going to bore you with all of that now. Basically what Holden took away from that whole experience was that we were wrong. His mother and father, whom he’d trusted implicitly, were so horribly wrong in what they believed, that it almost killed me. I was everything to Holden then. He was so tenderhearted. To see me in pain.… There were nights I’d be screaming in agony and Kar would play the stereo loud to try to cover it up. God, Sloane, it just… I’d do anything to be able to take away that part of his childhood.”
She took a deep breath. “After I got better, he changed. He pulled away from us. Started going to a conservative Christian church with my mother. I think he was looking for some kind of certainty, something to help him deal with his fear. He grew disillusioned with that church too, after a few years, but he’s still… he’s still searching. And he has to find it on his own. He won’t listen to us.”
“Shit. He’s rebelling,” I said, seeing it clearly for the first time.
She gave a sad little laugh. “Oh, big time! Kar and I decided it was our cosmic due. We’d both rebelled against our parents so hard when we were his age. Do you know I was born Susan Smith and Karma’s name was Robert Franklin?”
“No way!”
“Oh, yes. We changed them legally when we got married. In our case, both our parents were conservative, so we turned out like this.”
“And Hank’s gone Mr. Conservative Commando.”
“He votes Republican,” she said, with such a soft, bewildered tone, I couldn’t help but laugh. And then I couldn't help but give her a hug too.
“Oh my God, the horror,” I whispered.
She laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, all of us have strong opinions in this household, if you haven’t figured that out yet.”
I let her go and held up my hands in mock surrender. “I’m not even going there, so don’t ask.”
“We won’t grill you about your politics. I promise.” She looked at me fondly and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. It was the sort of thing my own mother would never do, and I would have thought I’d hate it, but I didn’t.
“You like Hank, don’t you?” Lilith asked me bluntly.
I coughed on my mint tea. “Um… as a friend. Ish. Not that way. He’s straight.”
“Hank is still… trying on clothes,” she said hesitantly. “He’s so bright, it’s easy for him to pick up a skin and wear it, but that doesn’t mean it fits. You already know there’s more to him than meets the eye. All I can say is, don’t give up.”
Don’t give up. Hank’s mother was telling me not to give up on him. How was a guy supposed to get over a guy who looked like Hank with encouragement like that? It wasn’t fair.
“Hell, I think we could both use a laugh after that,” she said, closing the album. “Come on, Gregore. Ralphie awaits.”
* * *
Hank
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nbsp; “Man, that party sucked ass,” Stan complained as we left Quarryville.
“It was free booze. That’s about all that can be said for it,” I agreed.
And I hadn’t even had much of that. About ten minutes after we arrived, it was clear that the ratio of men to women was ten-to-one, and the few women that were there were part of a couple. Apparently, the girls we’d gone to high school with had better things to do three days before Christmas than hang out at Matt Gibbon’s house. Stan, seeing his prospects for getting laid going down the tubes, asked if I minded driving so he could get shit-faced. I didn’t. Six rum and Cokes later, Stan had more than accomplished his objective.
“You’re gonna have to sneak into your room, man,” I said. Stan’s mom hated it when he was drunk. His parents went to a pretty strict church.
“Just pull over for a bit, okay?”
“What?”
“Find a quiet place to pull over. Don’ wanna go home like this.”
I’d never seen Stan get sick, but the request had me freaked. We were out in the country heading toward Stan’s house. I saw a pull out off the side of the road and rolled into it.
“You okay?” I asked, shutting off the truck.
“Peachy.” Stan’s head was back on the headrest, though, his eyes mere slits. “I was hoping Brenda Stanfield would be there. ‘Member her?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t she dating that football player?”
“Heard they broke up.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t picture a high-class girl like Brenda Stanfield at one of Matt’s parties, newly single or not, but I didn’t say so. “So you and Simone… you’re not serious then?”
Stan snorted. “She thinks so. But she’s not here, is she?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re only young once, right?” Stan’s words slurred. “Soon ‘nough I’ll be married. Two kids ’n a mortgage. Wanna enjoy myself while I can.”
I huffed a laugh. “Stan Borowski talking about marriage? Now I’ve heard it all.”