Together, Apart

by Erin A. Craig

  So I opened my mouth, and my brain was suddenly extraordinarily empty, as if my one joke had cored me out, and the stupidest thing was that I knew as soon as I walked away, al the good things to say would come, because of course, the English language consists of many, many words, and they can be arranged in al sorts of order to make meaning. But there I was, standing like a statue, with my mouth open like an idiot, and it wasn’t getting better, the longer I stayed that way.

  So I said, “Bye.”

  And they each said, “Bye.”

  And I walked on, knowing for the entire month of May, and for however long this pandemic thing was going on, my only goal would be to never see those people again.

  —

  From that point on, I stayed on the west side of 26th Street, which was decidedly less beautiful, less canopied with huge trees, and therefore less shady, which definitely mattered in Phoenix between May and September, when the flaming sun was only six or seven feet above the city at al times.

  Which was why I had to wake up at five-something every day to walk.

  Because walking dogs once the sidewalk had started to sizzle was evil and abusive, and I’d never ever do that to poor Griffin.

  And maybe it was three days later, as I turned the corner from 25th Place onto Pinchot, that I saw, again, coming toward me like an unstoppable force,

  the masked brigade and their canines. And I thought, God, why are you doing this to me? Isn’t COVID-19 enough?

  But it wasn’t, and as I walked toward them, Griffin pul ing me forward the whole time, I had nothing. Nothing in my brain to say. So as I approached, I pasted on a smile they couldn’t see beneath my mask, and I said, “Hi!” and kept walking, and they al said “Hi” back. Fol owed by the most surprising three words of the entire pandemic thus far.

  The boy turned to me as I passed, motioned my way with his hand, and said, “Walk with us.”

  I turned and fol owed, like an obedient dog, al the while my heart pumping like I had just been threatened with a painful death rather than just walking with a bunch of strangers. I walked alongside the boy, behind the group of adults, my thump-thumping heart making it hard to hear and harder to breathe. The adults up ahead chatted with each other, and we two non-adults lagged behind.

  He didn’t say anything for a while, which actual y kind of helped, because it made me feel like maybe he didn’t think it was so weird that I wasn’t saying anything. But as the silence stretched on, I thought maybe it was getting rude, so I gulped, decided to pretend I was someone who could conversate, and pointed to the teen boy’s dog.

  “Doodle?”

  “Labra,” he said.

  “Me too. I mean, not me, mine. Is. Griffin,” I said, and somehow I knew he knew I meant the dog. You never give out names with dog people, because who remembers people names?

  “Squirrel,” he said back.

  I raised an eyebrow. “You named your dog Squirrel?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see him lob his head around. He had shoulder-length hair the color of hay and tanned skin. His face was so thin it made me think of those vises in shop class, and I imagined his face in there getting squeezed, which was not nice or charitable but sometimes my brain goes to weird places. “My dad,” he said. His voice from behind the mask was honeyed in that way that other queer kids sometimes talked, that way that made you kind of know it’s okay, you’re not going to get jumped. “He

  thought it would be funny at the dog park to yel ‘Squirrel’ when cal ing our dog, and al the other dogs would be like, ‘Where’s the squirrel?’ Dad joke.”

  I grimaced and laughed despite myself. “Oh no he didn’t.”

  “You know that thing where you think, like, One good thing about the pandemic is I’l get to spend more time with my dad. And then you do and you’re like, Yeah, no.”

  As we turned east on Earl , our dogs pul ed toward the church with the perfectly manicured green lawn Griffin enjoys writhing around on. We let them lead, and soon we had that weird moment when two dogs simultaneously squat, while you wait there, both holding an empty poop bag and avoiding eye contact.

  And the guy, whose name I stil didn’t know, said, “Do dogs think we are mining them for their incredibly valuable poo?”

  I was like, What?

  He continued. “I mean, we house them, we feed them, we take them out, and when they poo, we col ect it.”

  “Huh,” I said. Wondering for the first time if maybe this kid was not so much a Normal.

  “Daxton,” he said.

  “I thought you said Squirrel?”

  “No, my name.”

  “Oh. Kaz,” I said.

  “Good to meetcha, Kaz. Meet us again tomorrow?”

  Against my better instincts, I said yes. And I admit that I felt the slightest jolt of joy, imagining more conversations with the cute, queer boy who said not Normal things.

  —

  The next morning, after finding them on the corner of 27th and Earl , we paired off again, me and Daxton lingering back.

  “Who are the adults?” I asked. “Are they your mom and dad?”

  He laughed. “I wish. No. I just saw them walking one day and I went up to them. They were real y nice and invited me to walk with them, so I did.”

  I couldn’t imagine doing that. But I could total y imagine Daxton doing it, and being total y normal about it.

  “Cool,” I said, meaning it.

  Griffin pul ed on the leash and I let up some, al owing him to peer around the oleander bush where, once a few years ago, he saw a smal , brown feral cat. For the zil ionth time in a row, it wasn’t there, but I knew he’d expect to see it tomorrow. He’s a very hopeful dog.

  Then we walked some, six feet apart, both lost in our own thoughts.

  “I think the pandemic is like God’s way of tel ing humans to go to their room,” he said, as we passed the house with the aqua and orange tile mosaics assembled on the mailbox and the concrete side wal .

  I cracked up and pul ed Griffin away from a bush of foxtail burrs. Those things were impossible to get out. This was not a very Normal thing to say, and I liked that. Stil , shape-shifters. You had to be careful.

  “And I don’t mean like Pat Robertson’s God, like someone trying to sel you something so your soul goes to the good place. More like actual God.

  Who is like a tree, or al trees, maybe. Who doesn’t care if you’re queer, like us.”

  I stopped walking. I’m basical y out and everything, but. Adults. Not everyone is so okay with things. So I kinda meekly pointed ahead at them.

  They were walking maybe ten feet in front of us.

  “They’re adults in Central Phoenix. I’m pretty sure they know what queer teens look like.”

  We started walking again, and soon we found that we could hear each other from opposite sides of empty 27th Street, which was silent except for occasional dog barks and bird chirps. He was on the west side of the street, saving the east side and the rare shade from trees to me. The street was this cool hodgepodge of old farmhouses, some with untended desert landscapes, others showcasing English gardens in the middle of the desert. Behind shrubs and gates sat secret gardens that you could sometimes catch a glimpse of from the right angle. A few artists displayed mosaics that expressed gratitude,

  or joy, or peace, or Black Lives Matter. Praising health care workers. I loved it here.

  “You out?” he cal ed from the opposite side of the street.

  I shrugged. I was, though perhaps not at the yel ing-across-the-street level of outness. I was selectively out. At school with friends, yes. My mom knew, my grandma didn’t. That sort of thing. No need poking the angry bear. Or, in this case, the Pentecostal bear who occasional y spoke in tongues.

  “We moved here from Pinetop a few months ago,” he said. “Great timing, right? I got like two months at my new school before it shut down. Me and my dad. It was so not okay up there.”

  That made sense to me. He’d been al closeted up for so long,
and now that he could, he was wearing his queerness on his sleeve. Because he could.

  Griffin was veering left and right, like a prisoner on his one daily outing, which I suppose in a way he was. I stopped to let him sniff and then water a tal succulent that sat in front of a short peach fence. Daxton stopped too, and he crossed over toward where I was. I looked behind me, wanting to make sure there was enough room to give him distance.

  “That makes sense,” I said. “Do you like it here?”

  He nodded. “I like my high school. School for the Arts, you know it?”

  My eyes lit up. “Oh, cool.”

  “Yeah, my dad did okay on that one. He’s like NASCAR Dad with a heart of gold. It’s total y weird.”

  We lingered as our dogs sniffed near each other, and the two adults were far in the distance now. I pointed, as if to say we should hurry up, and he shook his head and said, “It’s Caj.”

  I wasn’t sure I should, because people don’t like being corrected. But I took my chances.

  I said, “Um. It’s actual y Kaz. Like with a z.”

  He gave me this look like, What?

  Which was when it hit me that he meant their little dog-walking brigade.

  Was caj. As in short for casual. And I thought, Why do I even speak, ever?

  This is why I should join a monastery. So I nodded like I hadn’t just made a fool of myself, and then I played the scene back in my head and realized that

  there was no way to avoid it, so I giggled. And he giggled. And that made the awkward feeling pressing against my chest go away.

  “Hel o, Kaz with a z,” he said. “I’m Daxton with an x. And other letters.”

  I’m sure he could see I was blushing, but I hoped to god most of the red was under my mask.

  We made a plan to meet up to walk the next day, and somehow, I didn’t spend the entire day obsessing about conversation topics.

  Who am I kidding? Of course I did.

  —

  The next day was one of those rare rainy days, when the sky sags in the corners, where it goes foreboding gray and you kind of know you might be in for a monsoon. We walked alone, just the two of us, and while I felt a little like Yoko Ono breaking up the Beatles, I liked it better this way.

  He wore a black and red mask with the word love in cursive al over it. I wore a hospital-issue blue paper one. This seemed a little descriptive of the difference between me and Daxton.

  What I longed to do was take my stupid mask off. Mostly because maybe it would get him to do the same and al ow me to see Daxton’s ful face.

  Without seeing his mouth, it felt like I was stil missing this essential part of who he was.

  I pul ed at my mask dramatical y.

  “Damn. I wish we could take these off.”

  “Tel me about it,” he said. “But my dad has diabetes. He’s high risk. I definitely can’t.”

  I sighed, defeated. “Yeah. My mom works in a hospital. She’d kil me if she found out. On the plus side, at least I wouldn’t die of the pandemic.”

  As we waved to the old lady with the German accent who sat on her porch in the mornings with her cats, Daxton said, “Do you ever get tired of yourself? Like, real y tired?”

  I stopped walking. Griffin pul ed toward the cats, but my mind was on what Daxton had just said. I stared at him. Yes, of course I did. But this

  seemed like a trap. Like something a Normal says to make you let your guard down, and then they pummel you with it.

  “I don’t know.”

  He had stopped walking, too, as I guess he needed time and space to ponder my bril iant comment. Then he said, “Wel . I sometimes think, like. I can never leave my brain. It’s always talking, twenty-four-seven. I’m so sick of me.”

  And I thought, Yes! Me too! But I didn’t dare say it. So instead, I nodded a lot as we strol ed down different sides of Pinchot, and he shared things that were way too personal for me to ever say loud enough to be heard fifteen feet away, things about his mom’s death, and his dad crying softly behind closed bedroom doors after. I watched him, wondering what it would feel like to be confident enough to share private stuff like that, and this little part of me wanted to say something about when my dad left two years ago, my mom told me we had thirty days to mourn, to cry and be sad, and then we had to be done. But I wasn’t Daxton, and there was no way those words would ever breach my lips. So instead I nodded a lot, and said “yeah” and “right” a bunch of times, and when we got to my house, we paused, I did a meek little wave, and he wiped sweat off his forehead with the bottom of his tank top. Despite the cloudy day, it was already pretty hot. I tried not to stare at his bare bel y button and the smooth musculature of his torso. It was weird. I had now seen that but not his mouth. I wondered if the first time I saw his actual mouth, it would be like the first time seeing Nimo naked.

  “I’m sorry if the things I say make you uncomfortable,” he said as his shirt sadly dropped back into position.

  I swal owed. I shook my head fast.

  “They don’t?”

  “No, I. Like the things. You say.”

  He gave me two thumbs up. “Okay. Cool.”

  Griffin pul ed toward the front door, and I held tight because I had to say something. It was kil ing me to keep not saying everything.

  So I said, “You are, out of your head, the way I am. In my head.”

  He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “What? I’m out of my head?”

  “No. Ugh.” I gathered myself. I breathed a few times. “The things you say. Out loud. They are like. The things I say, but only in my head.”

  The corners of his mask lifted, and he looked down at his feet, as if he were shy like me. He didn’t say anything. Which was perfect because I didn’t have any more, either.

  —

  Our walks became the focus of my days. They started getting longer, too, which was great for me and great for Daxton, and probably less great for Griffin and Squirrel, who, despite looking and acting alike, behaved like inmates at the same prison who were in different gangs.

  “The thing about my dad is that he’s selectively awful about my queerness,” Daxton said one morning, a week later, as Griffin battled Squirrel for what appeared to be the optimal sniffing spot on my neighbor’s white rock, the one I’d named “Urine Rock” because of Griffin’s need to douse it first thing every morning.

  “What do you mean?” I leaned against the old Goldwater pine on the edge of my neighbor’s property.

  “Ugh.” He rol ed his head al the way back. He was standing in the middle of the street. No cars because of the pandemic shutdown. “On the one hand, he’s cool with it. He asks me if I have a boyfriend al the time like it’s no big deal. And then there’s ‘the other team,’ which I hate.”

  Squirrel attempted to mount Griffin, and he growled at her.

  “What’s ‘the other team’?”

  Daxton groaned. “When we watch a show or a movie, if he thinks someone might be gay, he’l nudge me. ‘I think that guy’s playing for the other team.’ And I’m like, Dad. What the hel team is this that you think we’re on?

  I’m on the other team. You idiot.”

  “That sucks. What does he say when you say that?”

  He kicked the asphalt below his feet and gently pul ed Squirrel toward him. Then he started to walk, so I fol owed. “Wel , I only say it in my head.

  That may be one of the reasons he doesn’t respond.”

  Our silences were comfortable by now. I didn’t feel like I needed to fil up the emptiness with anything, and we just let them coast along with us as we strol ed. I found myself walking at his side, maybe only four feet away, which wasn’t far enough, probably, but it was like I couldn’t bear to be far away from him. I glanced over to see his expression. He was looking down and there was this way his eyes appeared glassy in the midmorning sun that made me want to comfort Daxton, to reach out and touch him. He was right there, like if I stepped two steps toward him, those peach-fuzz-covered arms would
be touchable. I realized it had been a real y long time since Nimo. I longed to touch someone. But mostly, I longed to touch Daxton.

  “I don’t always speak up with my mom, either,” I said.

  He looked up, surprised, and it occurred to me I hadn’t said much that was personal to Daxton in the time since we’d been walking. I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t. If maybe this was too much, and I was opening up too much, like with Nimo. Like with Gus and Cyndi, my former friends who could now gargle Clorox for al I cared. Cross me once, shame on you. The end. I don’t need this second-time stuff.

  “It’s like she’s ‘Busy Mom.’ Not just now with the COVID thing, but that doesn’t help. Always. And because she works and she’s a mom, when she says something that isn’t okay, I just feel like, Wel , that was close enough. Like the time she said Nimo would one day wake up and realize she’s actual y a girl, not a boy. I was like, Whut? But then I felt guilty, because she works so hard. I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yes!” he shouted, his voice seemingly echoing in the silence of the morning. “It’s like my dad could be so much worse, and he brought me down here into the city where it’s safer for me, so I don’t give him crap when he’s kinda shitty. Like this one time this winter. I walked into the kitchen to get a soda, and he was on the phone with my uncle Arnie, who is awful, by the way, and I walked in just in time to hear him say, ‘something something, if I had a real son.’ ”

  I exhaled and gawked, thinking about how that must have made Daxton feel.

  “So that happened. I don’t even know if he saw me, because I just walked right out. And the rest of the day I was like, ‘Look at me, Dad! I’m a real boy!

  Like Pinocchio or some shit.’ ”

  My gut twisted. Poor Daxton. Who so didn’t deserve that. Who was just this amazing, dynamic person, and his dad was negating like his entire existence. And suddenly I wanted to touch him even more, and I fucking hated COVID-19.