There was a picture of the student from the yearbook on the wall and people were crying. I also cried, even though I did not know the football player who had died. Crying is like yawning. If one person cries, then everyone starts crying. Gert did not cry in the gymnasium but he did cry when we were back home at Uncle Richard’s. After the shooting there were metal detectors and police officers in the school, which made everyone angry and nervous at the same time.
I thought of the THINGS LEGENDS NEED list. A sword needs skill to use and is a powerful weapon in the hands of a master. Many cowards and villains use guns. As a hero, Gert should not have a gun.
While I was in Gert’s room, cursing the gun, I heard the door of the apartment open.
“Zelda?” Gert called, and I started to panic.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had the gun in my hand, which I did not mean to do. I meant to leave the gun in his room and never think about it again. But now it was in my hands, and I did not want to be holding it anymore.
Gert called my name again.
The panic continued inside me and I put the gun back into the box and locked it, and as fast as I could put it behind the gym bag in the closet. I just made it out of his room by the time he came down the hallway.
“What were you doing in my room?” he asked.
“Why were you lying to me?” I said.
He stomped past me and looked in his room and asked why his clothes were all over the place, if I wasn’t in his room. He looked in his closet where I had found the box with the gun. He rooted around in there and came out and said, “What is the rule about our bedrooms?”
“What is the rule about lying to me about writing your Midterm Exam?” I said back.
“What are you talking about?”
I went into my room, got the calculator and held it up, and said, “You forgot your calculator.”
“Oh.” Gert took the calculator. “This test isn’t one that needed the calculator. Stats needs the calculator. Not Macro. But I was looking for it.”
“But you use it for your studying,” I said.
“This was all word problems. You don’t need a calculator for that, do you?”
“No,” I said.
“And can we agree, once and for all, that you stay out of my room and I stay out of yours? Isn’t that about respect?”
I nodded. It was a RULE OF THE HOUSE we had come up with together.
He asked if I was hungry. Before I could answer he walked to the kitchen, went to the fridge, and took out ingredients to make a sandwich.
He started cutting some tomato. “What? You’re looking at me weirdly.”
“You did not do your test today,” I said.
The knife he was holding went through the tomato, over and over and going clunk on the cutting board. “Is that right? Then where was I for the last two hours?”
“Lying to me.”
He sighed and put down his knife. “All right. Out with it.” When I asked him out with what, he said, “Whatever it is you’re talking around. Just say it.”
I told him I knew that he skipped the test because I had gone to the classroom on his schedule on the fridge. He had forgotten his calculator and would fail the test without it. That was when I met Jenny and Karl and learned that he was on academic probation, which was very bad news and meant he would get kicked out of college if he didn’t smarten up.
“And Karl is out of hash,” I added.
As I talked he started putting the mayonnaise on two slices of bread that jumped out of the toaster. There wasn’t much mayonnaise in the jar and the knife bonked around.
“We are also out of something,” he said, holding up the mayo jar. “Have you been drinking this stuff or what?”
“I am not in the mood for making jokes,” I said. “You haven’t been going to class.”
He put the jar down. “Okay. You want the truth?”
I said that I did. “We are truth-tellers and part of the same tribe.”
“I’ve dropped Macro. The class. That’s all. I have no idea why they think I am on academic whatever.”
“Probation,” I said. “Which means you are in trouble and if you screw up more you get kicked out of school.” I had Googled what it meant and put it next to incongruity on my list of Words of Today.
“Yeah, I know what it means.”
I asked him why he was pretending to study for the test when there was no test. He said that he knew I was serious about him being in school and he didn’t want me to get mad. “I didn’t want you to worry or anything,” he said.
I became a bit less angry.
“So you haven’t been kicked out of school and will need to start working at the gas station again?”
“No. I won’t be doing any of that.”
He came over, holding a plate with a bologna sandwich cut in half, in triangles. I took one of the sandwiches and it tasted very good. We ate our sandwiches for a few bites and then he remembered something and put his sandwich back on the plate.
“I almost forgot.” He reached into his backpack and took out an envelope. “You’ve got mail.”
He handed it to me. My name was on the front and the stamp was of a Viking helmet.
“I don’t get mail,” I said. “Except from boring things like the government.”
Gert bit into his sandwich. “Go on. Open it.”
I tore the envelope open and inside was a card from Marxy.
It said:
DEAR ZELDA,
YOU AND GERT ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO HAVE DINNER AT MY HOUSE ON FRIDAY AT 5 P.M. PLEASE RSVP IF YOU CAN COME.
MARXY, esq.
I asked what RSVP means. “It means get back as soon as possible to let a person know if you can come,” Gert said. “Why?”
I could not help smiling. “We have been invited to dinner.”
“Is that right?”
“With Marxy and his mother.”
“Sounds awful. Can we say no?”
“NO,” I shouted.
“I know. I was just teasing you.” He finished eating one of his sandwich halves and licked his fingers. “When is this fancy dinner?”
“Friday.”
“Friday. I think I have plans.”
I gave him THE LOOK.
“Joking. Okay, we’ll go. All right?”
“And you have to behave yourself and be the perfect gentleman and wear nice clothes. You must represent our tribe well.”
“So many demands. Anything else, Captain?” He smiled at me. “I can’t believe you went all the way to the college yourself. That’s pretty impressive. I’m proud of you.”
I picked up my sandwich and took a big bite and suddenly the graphing calculator and academic probation or anything else didn’t matter anymore.
chapter nine
All week I had been thinking of the dinner with Marxy. We had texted back and forth about it a million times. He didn’t come to the Community Center because his father and Pearl were fighting over him and couldn’t decide where he should stay.
His father wanted him to go to a special school during the day where experts like Dr. Laird could show him extra attention.
I hate it, he texted me. I miss you and Yoda and Hamsa and Sarah-Beth and Big Todd and Annie.
I texted back and told him we missed him too.
On Thursday, AK47 helped me decide what to wear. There was a dress Uncle Richard had bought me for Gert’s high school graduation, which I never got to wear. It was white and blue and had flowers on it. There were no sleeves and you could kind of see my boobs squished in my bra underneath it.
I also had a pair of shoes that were nice and hurt my feet. AK47 said that was how you knew something was fancy. It ended up feeling crappy to wear.
On Friday, at exactly 4:30 p.m., I was wearing the dress and shoes, waiting for Gert to pick me up in front of our apartment building. When it became 4:31 p.m., I texted him that he was late.
He texted back: Two minutes.
Marxy texted
me saying: I am excited to see you!
Gert pulled up in his car. It was sparkling from the car wash and he was wearing his nice clothes.
“You look good,” I said, and did AK47’s frying pan finger sizzle, which she used to do when she thought Gert looked sexy.
He wiggled his shoulders and adjusted the seat belt. “It’s itchy as hell.” He pulled on the knot of the tie. “Are you nervous?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be. This’ll be fine.” He put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze.
We drove a little bit. On the other side of the window was the city, with all of its tall buildings sticking up. I could not tell which one of them was our apartment. They were far away, not just in distance. They also felt far away because the air felt different. They were like gray teeth in a giant blue mouth.
“I wish that we could do this all the time,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Wear nice clothes and go to dinner.”
Gert was quiet for a while. “You know, you look a lot like Mom wearing that dress. She used to wear dresses like that.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Not all the time. But we used to go to Church. You were still in the stroller.”
I asked him to tell me more. He scratched the part of the neck that stuck out near his tie’s knot. He said that he hated going to Church because he didn’t like sitting still, but he liked going with Mom. “She was so beautiful,” he said. “Man. Everyone stopped to talk to us.”
He told a story about how someone once tried to steal me, while I was in a stroller.
“Really?” I asked.
Gert laughed. “Yeah, we turned around for two seconds and someone was pushing your stroller away. An old woman. I guess she thought she was still young and you were her baby.”
“Holy crap,” I said.
“Yeah. I’m glad you didn’t get stolen, though. Even if you are a knucklehead sometimes.” He smiled at me and I said I was glad I didn’t get stolen too.
* * *
Marxy’s house was in the suburbs, and when we came to the door, Gert had a bottle of wine that I didn’t know he’d bought. He got it out of the trunk, wrapped in a brown paper bag.
“It’s what people do when they have dinner parties, right?” he said, showing me the bottle. “I think it’s red with dinner. But I’m not sure.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to a dinner party.”
I added it to the list of rules in my head: for dinner parties, bring wine, probably red. “Are we going to drink wine?” I asked.
“We don’t have to,” Gert said. “I know you have a rule about that stuff.”
Because of what happened to Mom and how she drank too much, I decided I was never going to drink, ever. It was a rule for myself. But Vikings drank, especially when happy and at a gargantuan feast, and I was feeling happy and going to a feast. Maybe there are different rules for feasting at dinner parties.
Vikings always drink mead and wine at powerful feasts, but they do not drink mead and wine at any other time. You cannot do battle if you have too much. I asked Gert if that was one of the rules of dinner parties—that you needed to drink mead.
“I mean, it’s what happens a lot. Not mead. Nobody drinks that anymore.”
“Then we can have wine. But only while eating.”
We walked up the stones in the ground in front of Marxy’s house, through the metal gate, and past flowers and a large tree.
Gert rang the doorbell and Marxy answered the door. He had a nice shirt on, dark blue, and nice brown pants, the kind with the line in the middle which is called a “crease.”
“Hello,” he said. “Welcome to my house.”
Pearl came up behind him. She was wearing a yellow dress and a gray cardigan over it. “Right on time. What’s this?”
Gert handed over the wine. “I wasn’t sure what to bring, so I got this merlot stuff.”
“Gert isn’t a big wine person,” I said. “He likes beer.”
Pearl smiled and stepped aside. “Well. It was thoughtful. Come on in. Kick off your shoes.”
“We have that rule too,” I said, closing the door behind us.
I had only been to Marxy’s house once, when neither of his parents could drive him to the Community Center and AK47 had to pick him up. That time I stayed on the bus. Now that I was inside, I saw pictures of Marxy as a baby on the wall, wearing a sailor’s outfit, and also his family. There was a painting on the wall of a ship at sea, and the house smelled very nice and soft, like laundry that comes right out of the machine.
The dinner table was already set up. Pearl was serving chicken and mashed potatoes. We sat with Pearl at the head of one side, and Gert on the other. Marxy and I were across from each other. Pearl asked if I wanted some wine. She opened the bottle with a corkscrew and poured herself some.
“Yes, please,” I said.
“Me too,” Marxy said, and Pearl told him he could have a little bit but not more than a glass. “He got into some coolers I had in the fridge one time, and let me tell you,” Pearl said, “that was a handful.”
“I puked all night,” Marxy said.
“Lesson learned,” Pearl said. “Is anyone religious here? We’re atheists, but I’m happy to say grace if that’s what you do.”
“We’re fine, right?” Gert said.
Marxy turned to me. “Zelda can say the Viking thing.”
I cleared my throat and closed my eyes to remember the Viking blessing from Kepple’s Guide to the Vikings. “Odin and the other gods, bless this bounty set here before us and have some yourself and enjoy it.”
Pearl smiled. “Odin, huh?”
“I used to go to Catholic school,” Marxy said, poking the chicken with his fork. “But I hated it.”
“The teachers there were puritanical. Here, honey. Use this.” She handed Marxy a sharper knife with the crinkly end, the kind you use to cut power meats like steaks.
Marxy turned to Gert after cutting up his chicken. “Did those hurt? The writing on your arms?”
Gert had rolled up his sleeves before dinner and you could see some of his muscles and tattoos. “My tattoos?”
Marxy nodded his head. “Is it like drawing with a pen?”
“No. It’s more like a needle.”
“I’d like a tattoo, please,” Marxy said.
“Ha.” Pearl nearly spilled her wine. “Fat chance of that. Though Marxy’s father has one.”
“It’s a name on Dad’s arm, right here,” Marxy said, patting his own arm between his shoulder and elbow.
“And not mine.” Pearl sighed. “Young love.”
Gert wiped his lips on his napkin and started cutting up more of his chicken on his plate very loudly.
“Marxy tells me you’ve started calling him something,” she said to me. “What was it, Marxy?”
“Fair maiden,” Marxy said.
I nodded. “All Viking heroes have fair maidens,” I said. “And before anyone says that only girls are allowed to be fair maidens, I think that those rules are old and we need new rules where anyone can be fair maidens.”
Gert laughed.
“I think it’s cool,” Marxy said. “Why are you laughing at me?”
Pearl reached over and patted his arm. “Honey, it’s okay. Nobody is laughing at you. Right, Gert?” She gave him THE LOOK.
“I’m sick and tired of people laughing at me,” Marxy said.
I kicked Gert under the table and he put up his hands. “Okay, hey, I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just not something you hear guys called a lot. That’s all.”
“Well, Zelda can call me it if she wants,” Marxy said, picking up a bite of chicken with his fork.
Nobody said anything for a little while. I decided to fill the silence with my announcement.
“And another thing is that I want to have sex with Marxy, because Dr. Laird says it’s normal for people our age to express our love for each other physically,” I said. “I have als
o got my period.”
“Jesus,” Gert said, putting his fork down. “Can we not talk about fucking periods, please?”
“I know all the rules about sex,” Marxy said.
Pearl poured herself some more wine and laughed. “Well, hello there, awkward dinner conversation topics.” She turned to Gert. “But I’m glad the subject came up, Gert, because this is the reality. They’re not children anymore. They have functioning reproductive systems, sex drives.”
“You’re talking about me like I’m not here again,” Marxy said.
“And me,” I added.
Pearl smiled and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I apologize. To both of you. Feel free to add anything.”
“We’re in love,” I said, and reached and held on to Marxy’s hand from across the table, almost getting my arm in the bowl of mashed potatoes.
Pearl nodded. “Marxy knows about sex. He masturbates.”
“Mom!”
Pearl shrugged her shoulders. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all masturbate.”
“I do,” I said. “Dr. Laird says the same thing. And Gert does too. I caught him once.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gert said, his face getting red. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
I wondered if all dinner parties ended up with people talking about important things. Gert did not like talking openly about things the way Pearl did.
Pearl continued talking. “I assume you aren’t comfortable with the two of them exploring their sexuality in your apartment.”
“No,” Gert said. “No goddamn way.”
Pearl nodded. “I agree. It probably isn’t ideal anyway.”
“Why not?” I asked.
She pressed her lips together and looked like she was thinking. “We’d want to make sure that your first time has as few complications as possible.”
“This whole thing is complications,” Gert said. “He can barely tie his shoelaces. There’s no way he should be having sex with anyone, especially not someone like Zelda.”
“I can tie my shoelaces,” Marxy said.
When We Were Vikings Page 9
