by M. O. Walsh
The only locker allowed to look any different was the one right beneath his. It was Toby’s old locker that the school had turned into a makeshift memorial. Kids had taped cards and crosses and ribbons all over it. It looked like something you might pass on a highway, existing only to say “someone died here.” The sight of it had broken Jacob down the first day he returned to school after Toby’s funeral. This was a day in which he walked in, stood in front of the locker, and found Trina there waiting for him. She looked at him and then down at the memorial and said, “This is all wrong, Jacob. That’s what people need to understand. That’s what we need to show them.” Jacob was so awash in grief he had no idea how to reply and so merely walked right back outside, where his dad was still parked in the lot as if he’d expected it. “We’ll give it another shot tomorrow, bud,” he said. “School’s not going anywhere.”
Jacob thought about taking the memorial down again today, as he had on every other day, just so he wouldn’t have to be reminded, but he did not. Instead, he looked through the slats in his locker to see if he saw a note, something from Trina, but he didn’t. He dialed in his combination and opened it up and, inside, saw a blue duffel bag that was most certainly not his.
He looked around and then carefully picked it up. He had no doubt that it was from Trina, but how? Had he given her his locker combination? He had not. The bag felt light and empty and this was a great relief. And what had he expected, exactly? A gun? Surely she was not that serious. Yet why didn’t he stop her when she mentioned guns yesterday? Why had he sent her those blueprints? What was he thinking? Who was he? Why was he always making mistakes? He pulled out the bag and unzipped it. He stuck in his hand and found nothing. Still, this was far enough, he thought, and threw the bag back into his locker, slammed the door, and spun the lock.
He then walked to first period, where he imagined Trina there staring at him but, instead, saw Mr. Hubbard at his desk with his feet propped up on a trash can. He had a pair of sunglasses on and looked asleep.
“Morning,” Jacob said.
“Is it?” Mr. Hubbard said without moving.
Jacob walked past Trina’s empty desk. Her absence bothered him. She often ran late but Jacob had the strange vision that she was not showing up at all today, that perhaps she was never coming back, and how would he feel about that? He sat down and took out his textbook.
After a few minutes, Mr. Hubbard sat up.
“Class,” he said. “Today we are going to talk about fate. And we are also going to talk about utter bullshit. And we are going to come to some very logical conclusions about how to distinguish between the two.”
Jacob looked around. His classmates laughed into their hands and made faces. This was undoubtedly the first curse word any of them had ever heard from Mr. Hubbard, or any teacher at Deerfield, and they seemed unsure what to make of it. Jacob was also unsure of what to make of the adults around him lately. His father and Deuce and now Mr. Hubbard, all seeming so silly in their maturity. He thought back to the night before when he’d heard his father stumbling in after midnight, singing a song apparently titled “I’m an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande,” and rumbling through the pantry and den. He heard his boots clicking down the hall, the opening and closing of doors. At one point, the sound of breaking glass. His father was drunk, he knew, and Jacob left for school without even seeing him.
“You doing all right, Mr. Hubbard?” Becca asked. “You look a bit different today.”
Mr. Hubbard stood up from the desk. He took off his sunglasses and had a wicked-looking black eye.
“I’m glad you asked that, Becca,” he said. “Because, you know, I feel different today. But we’re all supposed to be different these days, isn’t that right?” he said. “Look at Rusty Casanova over there, for Christ’s sake. Look at Heddy trying to make a swan out of an index card. Is that a swan, Heddy? By God, I can almost make out the neck! Congratulations on realizing your life’s true calling. I bet everyone in here is doing amazing new things, am I right? Tell me, class. Who in here feels different today?”
A couple of students raised their hands.
In his pocket, Jacob felt his phone vibrate.
“This is what we’re going to do,” Mr. Hubbard said. “I want everyone in here who feels different today to pull out their readings from that DNAMIX machine. We’re going to do an experiment. If you’ve done it, pull it out.”
Some of the kids began going for their pockets and backpacks, apparently too afraid to ask this new version of Mr. Hubbard what happened to his eye, and Jacob pulled out his phone. He had a text from Trina with a video attached to it.
Jacob clicked off the sound and hit play. His heart sank.
The video showed him at his locker just a few moments before and Jacob watched himself remove the blue duffel bag and dig around in it. He watched himself look up and down the hall, and the sight of this gave him chills. It looked like security footage or maybe a hidden camera, as if shot from up in the ceiling, somehow, through a vent. Was there a camera up there? How would Trina have access to that?
Jacob looked up at the ceiling.
Holy shit, he thought. Was Trina in the air ducts?
Beneath the video, a message came through.
Destined for Instagram? it read. You tell me.
Jacob put the phone back into his pocket. He felt a bead of sweat drip down his side. In one quick flash he had the horrifying notion that everything he thought about Trina was untrue. That the connection she felt to him was not one Trina was seeking to strengthen, but instead one she sought to exploit. But for what possible purpose? His heart beat heavily in his chest and Jacob tried to calm himself by being logical, by taking a deep breath, and by focusing on what was in front of him.
He watched Mr. Hubbard snatch a student’s readout from their hand and hold it up to the light.
“Well, now,” Mr. Hubbard said. “What do we have here?”
17
There’s Flies in the Kitchen, I Can Hear Them A-Buzzin’
Cherilyn felt a shadow cross her window.
She’d been off in la-la land, leaning against the kitchen sink and listening to the familiar racket of their coffeemaker gurgle and cough, looking down at her hands where they gripped the edge of the counter. She studied the various veins and wrinkles and freckles, the way her finger had grown swollen around her wedding ring. They were beginning to look like her mother’s hands, she knew, becoming an old woman’s hands, and Cherilyn thought of how strange it was to one day look down and think, Wait, these are not my hands at all. Whose hands are these? And then the room darkened, as if there had been an unexpected eclipse, and she felt the rumble of the truck before she saw it. It shook her insides, the engine in her driveway, and then it stopped.
Cherilyn looked out to see Bruce Newman open the door of his truck and step down. She felt an immediate sense of panic. What on earth was he doing there? What would anyone be doing there at this hour? Cherilyn had various daytime visitors, of course. Friends would stop by to chat, neighbors would ask if she’d seen their dogs or children, the mail person would slip envelopes through the door, but it was barely nine o’clock. She was still in her robe. She wasn’t even wearing a bra.
She cinched her robe and went to the laundry room to look for one. No luck there and, before she knew it, she was checking her reflection in the mirror by the coatrack. It was automatic. She pressed her hands to her face, crinkled her nose, and smoothed down her hair in the back. She was disappointed in how she looked. More disappointing than this, though, was the disappointment she felt in herself for being disappointed. It shouldn’t matter a bit how she looked to Bruce Newman. Of course, it shouldn’t. But it mattered, in a strange way, because of him.
Among all the poorly kept secrets in town, Deuce’s crush on Cherilyn was likely the worst and she knew this. A number of women were even jealous of Cherilyn, she’d once heard,
for taking up that space in his heart. He would be a decent enough catch, she supposed. He was country smart and ambitious, good with tools and computers and cameras, handy around a house. He wasn’t attractive, necessarily, but had a girth about him that some women liked. He resembled a clumsy black bear, she thought, which could have a certain appeal. Hell, she knew plenty of women who had settled for worse. And, because of this, Cherilyn privately felt obligated to look her best around Deuce. She’d felt this way for years, like some mentor may feel about an adoring student, as if not letting them down was important, and she was not proud of this. It made her feel vain and sort of duplicitous, but what she never liked to admit to herself was that it also made her feel powerful. She enjoyed the way Bruce looked at her. And who wouldn’t? It was nice to feel attractive, wasn’t it? It was pleasurable to feel wanted, even if she didn’t want anything in return.
And so, any time she and Douglas went out to a party or social function where she knew Bruce might be, Cherilyn spent a bit more time at the mirror, a bit more time staring into her closet. This was, in its way, an onerous thing. She could wear no makeup at all, hit the town in a grocery bag and leggings, and Douglas would still love her. She knew that. He was unshakable. But around Bruce, for whatever petty reason, Cherilyn wanted to look her best. She understood this was not her best quality.
She hoped to sneak off to her bedroom to change but, before she could turn the corner, she saw Deuce at the back door, standing in their garage. He was wearing a suit, of all things, ill-fitting and boxy, and looking at himself in the reflection of the glass. He saw her and smiled.
Cherilyn held her robe together and walked to the door. She opened it with her left hand and kept the robe to her chest with her right. “Bruce,” she said. “You lost or something? It’s nine in the morning.”
“You know me,” he said. “I’m never lost.”
Cherilyn shook her head and tried to look perturbed. He had no business being there and he knew it, she was sure of that. “Well, what’s going on?” she said, and nodded at his clothes. “Did somebody die?”
Deuce looked down at his suit. He tugged at the sleeves as if to try and make them longer. “No,” he said. “Big meetings today, is all. Trying to look my best. What do you think?”
“I don’t think any of those meetings are scheduled in my garage,” she said.
“No,” he said. “No, they are not.”
“So,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh,” Deuce said, and stepped back. He put his hand on his heart like he’d been shot by an arrow. He smiled. “Don’t ask me that question. Please, you know better than to ask me that.”
“Bruce,” she said. “You know very well what I mean. What are you doing here?”
“Maybe I’m not here for you, Ms. Smarty Pants,” he said. “Maybe I’m looking for Douglas. Is he around?”
“No,” Cherilyn said. “He’s at work. Today’s a school day.”
Deuce looked at Douglas’s car. “Well, how’d he get there?” Deuce said. “His car’s sitting here and yours is over at Getwell’s.”
“His is dead,” Cherilyn said. “It’s a long story. Is that really why you’re here?”
“I saw him there last night, you know. Looked like he was really tying one on.”
“He’s an adult,” Cherilyn said. “He and Geoffrey just went out to have a few.”
“Geoffrey?” Deuce said. “Is that what he told you?”
Cherilyn squinted her eyes in a way that, she knew, gave away too much. It was no business of Bruce Newman’s what Douglas had been doing, but had Douglas lied to her about it? For what possible reason? The idea was so peculiar to her that she had a difficult time recalling the last time she’d wondered it. Mainly in her nightmares, really, dreams where Douglas was hiding some sort of secret from her, not paying attention to her, or loving someone else. Terrible versions of her life in which Douglas did not care about her at all.
“Anyway,” she said. “He’s not here right now.”
“Bummer,” Deuce said. “I was going to offer him a ride to pick up the Outback. See if I could bend his ear little bit on the way. But, since he’s not here, maybe I could offer you that ride?”
“That’s either very chivalrous or very inappropriate of you,” she said. “But I don’t need a ride.” She pointed at Douglas’s car, a ten-year-old blue Honda Accord. “Maybe if you could get this one started, though.”
“Cherilyn Mae Fuller,” Deuce said. “Are you asking me to jump you off right here in your very own garage?”
She sighed. “Can you do it or not?”
“I can,” he said. “You want to watch?”
“No,” she said. “I want to get dressed. Fix that car, though, and I’ll fix you a cup of coffee.”
“Deal,” he said.
Cherilyn shut the door and walked back to her bedroom. And in the same alarming way it had done ever since she got that readout, her mind went in an unexpected direction. Maybe she was meant to be royal, she thought, maybe she was meant to be coveted. She had someone at her house doing her bidding right at that moment, didn’t she, and so what would a queen do in this situation? To what extent could she exercise her power? What could she get him to do if she asked him?
She went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. She swooped her hair back on her head like Susan of Oman and dropped her robe to the floor. She looked at herself, her living body, and this was not a bad thing at all. She felt the cool wind of the A/C on her back, felt it on her bare chest and thighs, yet remained incredibly warm, as if from the inside out, almost glowing with the power of her physical shape, and she pressed her back to the wall. It was cold against her skin and she placed her palms to the wall. She spread her fingers. She then turned her head to the side and closed her eyes as if bracing herself. But for what? she wondered. For what?
Cherilyn then threw on a bra and T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and very intentionally didn’t do another thing to gussy up. That would be his punishment for showing up unannounced. She wouldn’t do a single thing. When she got back to the kitchen, she stopped and looked to the garage, where Deuce’s truck was parked and idling. It took up the whole window. Both engines in her garage were now running, and what a strange sound that was. Is this what her home would look like if she had married Bruce Newman? A big shiny truck in her garage, if nothing else?
If Cherilyn ever decided to take him up on his offer from long ago, the one that she sometimes thought of, is that what it would be? That night when he caught her alone in the gymnasium hallway and gave her a key to his house. When he was near crying in his dumb earnestness and said, “Anytime. I mean it. Now or in fifty years, even if we’re just old bags of bones. If anything changes, this is it. You can have it. You keep it. You know where to find me.”
“Oh, Bruce,” she’d said.
“You would turn,” he told her, “my house into a castle.”
Now, truth told, Cherilyn couldn’t remember if he’d actually said that last bit about the castle or if it was her new wonderings that added it in, but she still had the key, she knew, just like she still had other things she rarely looked at, shoved in a box at the back of her drawer. A bracelet from high school. A pendant with her friend Jennifer’s picture, who’d died those years ago. A ticket stub from Les Misérables from a date she and Douglas went on where she’d sworn to herself that she would dedicate more time to her art. It was just a little box of things, just like Douglas had his own little private lockbox he kept in the closet. They were people, she understood, and not just spouses, and people have secret things.
Back in the kitchen, Deuce opened the door and wiped at his head. “I just have to know,” he said, “what kind of man doesn’t keep a set of jumper cables in his trunk? I looked everywhere. I had to use mine.”
“Come on in,” Cherilyn said. “Sit at the table. Cream
or sugar?”
“Neither,” Deuce said. “I take it au naturel.”
Deuce took off his blazer and aired it out, set it on top of a chair. “Does he even know how to fix a flat?” he said. “I didn’t see any tools in there at all.”
“We have Triple A,” Cherilyn said, and walked to the kitchen.
“Triple A to fix a tire?” Deuce said. “What in the hell is wrong with this country?”
Cherilyn poured him a cup and walked it over. “The Triple A is my choice,” she said. “It makes me feel safer.”
“Well, it’s a great American company, that’s true,” he said and took the cup. “Thank you.”
Cherilyn went back to pour herself a cup and Deuce sat at the table. He picked up one of the birdhouses she’d worked on the night before and began turning it around in the light. “Damn,” he said. “You made all these?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Just move them aside, if you like.”
“These are ornate,” he said. “You’ve really come a long way.”
Cherilyn sat down at the opposite edge of the table and watched him study the birdhouse. It was true that she’d come a long way with her crafts. She wasn’t revolutionizing anything, of course, but lately she’d started shaving and wetting her Popsicle sticks so she could bend them into different shapes, which had opened some possibilities. The one Deuce held had two little sets of spiral staircases going up the façade, which she was proud of. It had taken her a long time. Plus three different holes for windows. It was a home that was meant to be shared.