Izzy + Tristan

by Shannon Dunlap

  “But why? What’s he going to do?”

  I think of that time Marcus showed up with a bloody shirt and a secret to keep, imagine that blood as my own. “Nothing. Probably nothing.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? About the haunted house?”

  “There’s always a group of people who go with him. It will be more like a party than a date. I’ll figure out a way to come, too.” This will be no small feat, since I’m technically grounded, but I can tell that Izzy needs a promise right now.

  Izzy makes a face, obviously displeased.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”

  “We will?” She cuts her eyes sideways at me.

  “You’re mad. I get it.” I take her hand and squeeze, and though the thought of someone witnessing this makes me sweat, the gesture seems to relax her. “Besides, you can’t stay mad at me for long. I’m too cute.”

  “Maybe I’ll stand you up tonight,” she says, but I can tell by her half smile that she’s joking.

  “You wouldn’t,” I say. “It would kill me.”

  Marcus has been keeping scarce around the apartment lately, and though I’m pretty paranoid where he’s concerned, even I know that the most likely explanation for this is that he’s steering clear of Auntie Patrice. Usually, he’s able to divine better than anyone when she’s acting prickly; it’s as if there are special sensors installed in his brain. And though I’ve caught the edge of her anger this time around (see my de facto house arrest), I know the real reason she’s up in arms is that she’s worried to death about Marcus. Patrice never got into the kind of trouble that Marcus flirts with every day. She kept her nose clean, got good grades. Brooklyn was different then, and it’s one more sign of Auntie Patrice’s resolve of pure steel that she became who she is. Almost superhumanly, she seemed to elevate big portions of the neighborhood right along with her. But Marcus is made of gold, not steel.

  Anyway, it’s a little surprising when I wave goodbye to Izzy and go home to find Marcus sitting at the kitchen table with Patrice. She hasn’t even changed out of her work clothes yet, but she and Marcus are drinking big glasses of maubey and laughing. None of the quiet brooding I’ve seen at lunch. There’s an electrical kick in my blood as I take this in, like I’ve consumed too much caffeine.

  “T, my man,” Marcus says. “The person I’ve been looking for.”

  “Really?” I say. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve been telling Auntie about Izzy.”

  My brain splinters into all the different things that this could mean. I look to Patrice’s face for clues, but it’s a closed book. She leans back in her seat and folds her arms like she’s in a business meeting, trying to make a tough decision.

  “Izzy, down-the-block Izzy?” I say stupidly. “What about her?”

  “Yeah, of course that Izzy, the one you’re friends with, bro. I see you guys walking home together,” he says. I wonder for a moment if it is beyond Marcus to command an army of spy drones. Then he adds: “It’s all good, though. I like that you guys get along. You’re both smart. That’s why I want her to come over to dinner and meet Auntie Patrice, too, since she’s the smartest person in our family.”

  This feels like a trap. I stand there dumbly, my thoughts a hundred hamsters on a hundred different wheels, until Patrice smiles at me and says: “What do you think, Tristan? You think I will like this girl?”

  If I were the person Izzy wants me to be, this is when I’d say it: It doesn’t matter if you’ll like her. She’s mine. She wants me. You can’t have her, either of you.

  Instead, I swallow hard and say: “Of course you will. Everybody likes Izzy.”

  Patrice sighs. “Marcus swears that this girl is a good influence on him. That she is what has been keeping him out of trouble these past few weeks. So I certainly want to meet her.”

  “T is right. You’ll love her.” He pushes back from the table as though it’s all settled. “Let’s do it this Saturday.”

  “What about the haunted house?” I ask. It’s the wrong thing to say. Something passes over Marcus’s face; he hates the idea of anyone discussing him behind his back.

  “What about it?”

  “Izzy asked me about it today. She said you and a bunch of people are going next weekend, but you haven’t said anything about it to me.”

  “You’re jealous, my man?” Marcus laughs. “I thought you didn’t even like the scary stuff. But okay. We’ll have dinner here and then go into the city afterward.”

  “Tristan hasn’t been going out these days,” Patrice says.

  “Can we make an exception?” I ask.

  “Come on, Auntie. Spring him from his jail cell,” Marcus says. “He’s not the one who got in trouble, anyway.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Patrice says. Then she stands up and walks toward the hallway, touching Marcus on the shoulder as she goes.

  Marcus doesn’t say anything after she’s left the room, so I go to the sink and get a glass of water. My hand is shaking. It’s not fear, exactly, but a sense of things rushing toward some point that I can’t quite see. In chess, this is called zugzwang: the setup in which a move, any move, is a bad one.

  “There’s some talk out there, T, about you and Izzy.” I don’t turn around when he speaks. The air feels thick, viscous, and the words hang there like scum floating in a pond.

  “Who’s doing the talking?”

  “What does it matter if they’re only talking shit?”

  I steady my hand, turn around, and drain half the glass of water, trying to read Marcus while I’m swallowing, but he looks like his usual calm, cool self.

  “She’s right for me, T. I know it. Thing is, she doesn’t seem to know it yet. Maybe the family dinner will convince her I’m serious about her.”

  I set the glass down on the counter but keep my fingers wrapped around it, as though it’s a rock that can steady me. “Izzy’s great,” I say. “But there’s a lot of shit going on with her family. I think she’s too on edge to be into the idea of dating someone right now.” Nothing I’m saying is a lie. What Izzy and I are doing isn’t dating. It can’t even be compared to dating. It’s swimming, flying, devouring, living.

  “She tell you that?”

  “Nah, man. But I can tell from the stuff she does say, you know? Plus, I still feel like an asshole every time she mentions her brother.”

  I can’t tell if this is helping or merely digging me further into a hole. Marcus stands up, his muscles noticeable even under his loose clothing. “But she talks to you anyway, T. She likes you. That’s why she’ll listen to you when you tell her what a good guy I am.” Marcus walks over to put his glass in the sink. He’s wearing basketball shorts even though it’s chilly today, and he smells of sweat.

  “What did you tell them?” I ask.

  “Huh?”

  “These shit-talkers. What did you tell them when they started spreading rumors about me and Izzy?”

  “I said you were family,” Marcus says, crossing to the front door. “End of story.” I stand there for a long time after he’s gone, wondering about that word, family, and whether it still applies to anyone in my life. It’s a word that has been sapped of its power.

  THE QUEEN

  WHEN I THINK BACK ON THAT TIME, I STILL HAVE SO many questions: 1) How did we get by on so little sleep? 2) How did my parents or brother never hear me sneak out? 3) What did we talk about for all those hours? There are no satisfactory answers to the first two questions. We didn’t go out every night, so there were some nights of rest, but even so, I remember functioning in a twilight state, a confusion of waking and dreaming. But such petty concerns don’t matter when one is so young, so in love. And as for my family, I suspect that maybe they did hear me once or twice. The old house creaked; no door latch is perfectly silent. Hull could have been keeping a detailed log of my comings and goings to use against me in some later argument, for all I know. And my parents… maybe they thought I was going on a walk because I couldn’t sle
ep. Or maybe it was the least of their worries.

  But I do know the answer to the third question, because I still strive to recall every detail: the way his face looked when he first told me about his parents and his childhood, the words he used to describe Marcus, the tone of his voice when he remembered certain chess matches and what it had felt like to play them. Sometimes I truly believe I can recall every word he breathed in my presence. We talked until our throats went dry and scratchy, and then snuck into a park or the garden and kissed until our lips were raw.

  For as vivid as these memories are, they’ve all become interchangeable pearls on a single winding strand; I can no longer remember which night was which, or in what order the conversations happened. The exception was the night he invited me to have dinner at his aunt’s house, a request that flooded me with both anxiety and self-importance as I imagined him claiming me as his girlfriend in front of Patrice. Then he clarified that Marcus would be there, too. I could hear the apology in his voice for this, and it irritated me, as it likewise irritated me that he’d been sitting on this piece of news all night, only breaking it out as we rounded the corner onto our block. But that’s not why the night in question sticks in my mind.

  As we passed the playground, Tristan seized my wrist so suddenly and squeezed it with such pressure that I almost cried out. Then I saw what he was looking at and bit my lip. People standing near the monkey bars where Tristan and I had first met, three of them, only about twenty yards from us. Tristan pulled me down into the shadows cast by a bike rack. I recognized his voice first, the same that accosted me in the hallways of Carl Sagan—Marcus. The other two were unfamiliar, but they looked tall, big, not at all like Marcus’s ragtag band of usual followers. My breath sounded too loud in my ears, and I tried to hold it, tried to catch the muffled words. No luck. My calf cramped, and I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached, trying to stay perfectly still and quiet.

  In the darkness, I thought I saw a glint as something passed from the hand of one of the men and into Marcus’s. And then they drifted away, Marcus down our block, the two men up the street past the community garden. We didn’t move a muscle until they were out of sight.

  “Tristan,” I whispered, my heart trembling like a panicked Chihuahua. “Was that a gun?”

  “A gun? Nah, I didn’t see a gun.”

  I ran a replay in my mind, trying to assess how sure I was about it. “Something scared you, though.”

  “Those guys,” Tristan said. “I think I recognized them. I thought Marcus stopped hanging out with them a long time ago.”

  “Why would he stop hanging out with them?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Look, let’s go home. We can get a couple of hours of sleep.” We crept forward, feeling shaken, feeling watched, and gave each other a perfunctory kiss goodbye in front of my house.

  Nothing terrible had happened. I kept reminding myself of that as I snuck up to my room, but even after I’d crawled beneath the warm comforter on my bed, there was still a deep metallic chill in my bones.

  THE KNIGHT

  WHEN I GET HOME, I LIE DOWN ON THE BED, BUT SLEEP won’t even flirt with me. I count sheep, mentally run through one of my favorite matches, Kasparov versus Topalov in 1999. I flip the pillow over to feel the cooler side. I grope in the darkness for my phone in order to check the time: 4:38 AM. Since the phone is already in my hand, I call my father’s number to hear his voice on his voice mail, but to my surprise, he picks up.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Tristan?” he says, as though anyone else would greet him in this way. There are voices in the background and spurts of laughter; he’s probably hanging out with musicians or bar owners after hours. “How’s Brooklyn, son?” It’s so perfectly my father to not even bother to ask why I might be calling him at this strange hour.

  “Brooklyn is…” My tired brain searches for the right description. “Brooklyn is changing.”

  “Huh,” my dad says, possibly distracted by someone else in the room. “You doin’ all right, kid? You’re not getting in any trouble, are you?”

  “No,” I say, though I’m not sure which of his two questions I’m answering. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, sure,” Dad says, and I can hear a squeak like a door opening and then quiet in the background. It’s not much, but I feel good that he’s making space for this strange call from out of the blue. “What’s up?”

  I haven’t really considered how to ask this question until my mouth starts moving. “When you think back to the days when you and mom were first together, is there anything you regret?” I can feel the intensity of his listening on the other end, and then there’s a long sigh, and he takes his time before he starts talking.

  “I guess,” he says, “that I regret any of those little things that got in the way of me spending more time with her while she was still on this earth. I wish we had argued less, slept less, worried less about what people were saying about us. When I think about that time, it’s so obvious that your mom was the only thing that mattered, and I wish I had acted like that was the truth, every day, all the time.” He coughs, audibly inhales, and I wonder if he’s smoking again. “Does that answer your question?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay,” he says, and then sighs again. “I’d ask who she is, but I expect you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

  “I will.” He’s given me the answers I knew he would, the ones I’d probably been fishing for when I dialed his number.

  We say our goodbyes and when I hang up, I pick up the photo that’s been lying facedown on the bedside table. From what I know of my mother, she wasn’t the type to regret much of anything. “But what about Marcus?” I say to her smiling, newlywed face. “What’s he doing out this late?” She refuses to give away any secrets before I fall asleep.

  To say that Izzy is not particularly pleased about the family gathering would be an understatement. This is when we were supposed to be coming clean to Marcus, but instead I’m asking her to turn our lies into dinner theater. Even so, Izzy is curious about Patrice. “What should I talk to her about?” she’s been asking, and “Which dress of mine do you think she’d like better: the navy blue one or the green one?” Izzy knows almost everything about me, but I’ve probably soft-pedaled the fact that Patrice is pretty hard for me to figure out myself. I’m not sure how smooth I can make this meeting.

  “Also, have I mentioned that I hate haunted houses?”

  “You’ve mentioned it a few times,” I say to her, the day before the dinner. We’re lugging plastic bins full of chess sets to Mr. K’s car, helping out in service of getting a few minutes alone. I had to practice one-on-one with Mr. K in advance of a big district tournament coming up, even though my head wasn’t really in it. Izzy spent the period slumped across from a freshman with adenoid problems, looking miserable. “I’ll be there, though. It’ll be all right.” I set the bin down on the asphalt in order to wrestle with the tricky lock on the back of Mr. K’s ancient dark blue hatchback. It is true that I’ll be there, Patrice having been convinced to officially relax her imposed rules for the evening. I’m less certain about the latter part of my statement, since I’m dreading the outing myself.

  “Sure,” Izzy says, heaving her box into the back of the car. “What could go wrong?” She smiles wryly at me, and I kiss her impulsively, out in the light of day, just once.

  Izzy has chosen the green dress, I notice when Patrice answers the door on Saturday night, and she looks even more beautiful than she usually does: a flush to her cheeks, her hair pinned back from her face. She’s carrying a big bouquet of orange daylilies.

  “How lovely,” Auntie Patrice says, accepting them. “It’s been ages since I’ve bought cut flowers. They live for such a short time.” I can see something crumble a little in Izzy’s expression, but she’s careful to keep her smile in place.

  “It was so nice of you to invite me over,” Izzy says, her eyes straying nervously to mine.

  “Ma
rcus wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Oh, yes, sure,” Izzy says. “I’ve noticed he’s quite good at that.”

  They both laugh uneasily. “That boy,” Patrice says. “And now he’s not even here yet.”

  “Come in and sit down, Izzy. I’m sure Marcus will get here soon.” I try to make my voice calm, to cool the sizzle of nerves we’re all feeling, and Izzy looks as though I’ve tossed her a life jacket. When she answers, her voice sounds almost normal.

  “Thanks, Tristan.”

  “You call him Tristan?” Patrice asks as we walk into the kitchen. “I thought I was the only one who used his full name.”

  “Oh, well. It’s a nice name. I like names that are unusual. He’s the only Tristan I know, and now you’re the only Patrice I know.” I know that Izzy means this sweetly, but I see Aunt Patrice bristle a little, since all the kids on the block, and even some of the former kids who are long since grown up, call her Ms. White. She goes to stir something that’s bubbling on the stove, and that thing happens when I see, really see, the apartment for the first time in a long time, see it as though I’m Izzy looking at it with fresh eyes. The walls have decades’ worth of paint layers on them, and the refrigerator is old and shabby. For the first time, I consider how strange it is that Izzy has never been here, and I’ve never been beyond the doorway of her house. From what I glimpsed, their refrigerator probably isn’t shabby in the slightest.

  “Smells delicious,” Izzy says, though it sounds a little like she’s trying to convince herself that it’s true. I can tell from the smell of cumin and ginger that Patrice is making something Caribbean, and I wonder if she cooked this up as some sort of test.

  “So, how are you liking the neighborhood?” Patrice asks nonchalantly, though I know it’s a question with a million land mines attached.