The Other Half

by Jess Whitecroft

  *

  I didn’t know what he meant by that at the time. Now I do.

  Yesterday I was picking out wedding cake samples. Today I’m parked by the side of a road in Bumfuck, New Hampshire, trying to stop crying long enough to drive safely.

  The day went to shit in the mid-afternoon and got worse from there. I should have seen it coming. The signs were all there, but I wasn’t paying attention. Instead I was fixated on a flip chart in the corner of the meeting room at work. Someone had written THE TWILIGHT EFFECT in blue magic marker.

  “Jake’s buzzword caught on, then?” I said, remembering how he wrinkled his nose at the word impact used as a transitive verb. Pretty delicate for someone who can roll in the marketing stink with the best of them.

  “He’s a real find, isn’t he?” said Amy. “Actually, Chris, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. How would you feel about taking Jake on?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, he’d have to apply internally,” said Amy. “Obviously. But I think he could be a real asset to the marketing department. Initially he’d work under you…”

  “Initially?” I knew what that meant. “Until what? Until it’s time to put me out to pasture and get someone younger to do my job?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m not saying that at all. You’d be working side by side, bringing your own expertise to the department.” Then she pressed her lips together and I knew what that meant, too. It meant she was trying to figure out how to say something mean. “It might be a positive change for you. An attitude adjustment.”

  “Attitude? And what’s wrong with my attitude?”

  “It’s negative,” she said. “No, don’t look at me like that, Chris. It is. You’re supposed to be selling these books and you make it obvious in every single internal e-mail and conversation that you think they suck.” She tapped on her phone. “Here. From yesterday. ‘Ninety pound white chick falls in love with paranormal thing and discovers she’s the chosen one. Usual teenage girl crap. Blah blah blah.’”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But that’s what most of them are. Show me a book with some diversity and maybe I won’t have to fake enthusiasm.”

  She blinked at me. “Really?” she said. “You’re using the race card to hide behind misogynistic criticism?”

  “What?”

  “‘Usual teenage girl crap,’” she said. “How is that not misogynistic? You’re saying that something is crap because it appeals to teenage girls.”

  “Yeah, and you’re saying I’m playing the race card by saying I’d like to see a brown person in a thing for once,” I said. “How is that not racist?”

  She stared at me in that unbearably white way for a moment, her mouth half open. “Excuse me? Are you calling me racist?”

  “No, I’m saying the way you’re dismissing my legitimate criticism of the genre is racist.”

  “You were the one who started complaining about diversity!”

  “Complaining?” I laughed. “Oh my God. Are you listening to yourself right now? I wasn’t complaining. I was just pointing it out. If you want to hear complaining, let’s talk about that New Orleans trilogy that you’re pushing. There’s like one black character, and she’s practically a mammy straight out of Gone With The Wind. In New Orleans. How do you set a book in New Orleans and come out with an almost entirely white cast? The only white people in New Orleans are vampires, for God’s sake.”

  “Okay, I am aware the content is problematic…” she started to say, but I was done.

  “Oh, fuck your problematic content,” I said. “We’re always publishing ‘problematic content.’ You all clutch your pearls in private but you’ll stand behind it in public, especially when it’s making you money. Then all your wokeness is…well…gone with the goddamn wind.”

  Her expression was flatter and colder than a section of Arctic tundra. “We are attempting to address these concerns,” she said. “Okay? But getting angry doesn’t solve anything.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said, sick of the whole thing. I hadn’t started this bullshit. She was the one who claimed I was hiding behind the race card, after all. “If you don’t mind, I won’t continue this conversation. I don’t think it’s productive and I don’t want you to say anything else you’ll regret.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’m taking the afternoon off.”

  So I did, and that was a mistake. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell right now. Everything hurts so much.

  I was still seething when I got home, rehashing every line of that ugly conversation with Amy. I’d always counted myself lucky, relatively insulated from prejudice by virtue of my liberal, academic background. But that protective world had left me without a certain toughness, and so it hurt. Really hurt, like when I was at Brown and people automatically assumed I was there on a sports scholarship, even though I was five foot ten and couldn’t shoot a damn hoop to save my life. That was when I realized that it didn’t matter how much money I had, or how much education – there were always going to be white people who could make me feel like I was walking through the pages of a Ralph Ellison novel.

  All of these things and more were running through my head when I got back to the apartment. Sebastian was home. I could hear the shower was on in the bathroom.

  “Hey?”

  There was a long pause, and then Sebastian’s voice. “Chris?”

  That was when I knew something was wrong. Because he didn’t sound surprised to hear from me at this time of day. He sounded terrified.

  He stepped out, a towel around his waist. “What are you doing here?” he said, and he was so pale he almost blended into the wall.

  “The shower’s still running,” I said, because it was. An old argument. I was always nagging him about saving water, about not leaving the tap running while he was brushing his teeth.

  He just looked at me, and swallowed. I made a move towards the bedroom to turn off the shower. He stepped in front of me, and that was when I knew everything was fucked. Or rather he was.

  There was a man in the shower.

  “It was a mistake,” Sebastian said, but there was only one thing on my mind.

  “Did you fuck him in our bed?”

  He didn’t answer. And that was far worse than if he had. “Don’t touch me,” I said, as he reached out to me. “If you touch me I’m gonna fucking throw up.”

  I don’t know how I did it. I went through the bedroom in a frenzy, throwing things into a bag. Do you know? He’d said it twice, and I’d missed it both times. He was trying to tell me he’d cheated.

  “Please,” he said. “We can talk about this. It was a mistake. Chris, where are you even going?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Anywhere. Away from you. Fucking Mars wouldn’t be far enough right now.”

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the short but unpleasant story of how I ended up on the road to New Hampshire.

  5

  Jody

  At night it’s so quiet that I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I sleep like a baby, alone in the middle of the saggy big bed, and even if it is kind of chilly at least I’m dry. The fall golds fade as the year paces towards Thanksgiving, and soon there’s going to be frost, so I plug the gaps under the windowsills with old newspaper, and pray the pipes are going to last out the winter. I scrub the kitchen floor on my hands and knees and take an old toothbrush to the stained glass above the front door. I think it’s Art Nouveau, all swirls and curves, very fancy, and by the time I’m done I’m filthy, flecked all over with toothbrush freckles of dirt. But I’m satisfied. The glass panel gleams so bright that I can’t resist stepping outside the front door to see how it looks from the outside with the light shining indoors. It’s pitch dark now. I’ve been at this for the whole afternoon and evening.

  The glass is several shades of gold, the background so pale it’s almost cream. Two orangey tulips cu
rve up the sides, their petals forming the corners of the design. In the middle is another tulip, with pale green leaves and a flower that’s still – after over a century of sunlight – red as a candy apple.

  “Beautiful,” I say, out loud.

  I hear a car somewhere, too close for the nearest road. Weird. It’s only when I see headlights through the trees that I realize it’s coming up the drive. Who the hell is coming out here at this time of night?

  The high beams catch me right in the eyes. Blinking like I’m about to be abducted by aliens, I step down from the porch. The engine cuts out and it’s dark once more.

  It’s him. Him with the lips and the pretty green eyes and the boyfriend who probably wants me dead. It’s not the first time I’ve thought about him lately. While I’ve been scrubbing and plugging and restoring I’ve had full conversations with myself about how typical of my life it would be if he turned out to be the other half.

  “You’re Chris Solomon, aren’t you?” I say.

  He slams the car door shut. “Yeah.”

  “Shit. I knew it.” He looks tired, and even sadder than I remember. “Come on in.”

  Of course I’d end up owning a house with the stranger I tongue-kissed while high at a funeral. It’s like the only possible outcome with me.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, as he follows me into the house, stepping over the bowls and towels and cleaning stuff I’ve left all over the hallway. “I know we didn’t have time to formally…”

  “Nah, it’s cool,” I say, as I head for the kitchen. I could really use something hot to drink right now. “I knew it was you anyway. I had a feeling, in my bones. My mom says it’s because my dad is part Oneida and somehow that makes me like, psychic or something, but I’m just basing things on experience here. My rule of thumb is that the shittiest thing you think is going to happen? Yeah. That’s the thing that always happens.”

  I turn away from filling the kettle, suddenly aware that I’m talking way too much. I’ve been alone for over a week now.

  “I’m sorry to be a shitty…thing,” he says, and I immediately feel bad, because he looks awful.

  “Oh no, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, I don’t know you personally, but I’m sure you’re really great. Like, you taste good, and I know for a fact that you smell nice, so that’s…” I’m not helping.

  “Awkward?” he says. His eyes are puffy, like he’s been crying. Maybe it’s because I’ve been cleaning antique glass with a toothbrush all day, but I have a sense that I’m going to have to handle him very gently.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Definitely that. You want some tea?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He hesitates a moment before taking a seat at the kitchen table. Nice manners for someone who literally owns the place. Or half of it, at least.

  “So,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m moving in,” he says. “Because my life exploded.”

  Oh God. I was only making small talk. No wonder he looks so brittle. “That sounds serious. Did your boyfriend find out about our little…oops?”

  He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “Actually he had an oops of his own,” he says, with impressive dignity. “A much bigger one.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah,” he says, and I can tell he’s fighting to keep it together. “And it wasn’t the first time.”

  “Double shit.”

  He gives a tight, humorless smile. “Yeah. I think it’s safe to say the wedding is off, because I can’t even think about him without wanting to smash something right now…” He covers his mouth with a hand. Two large tears leak out of the corners of his eyes and I quickly pull up a chair beside him. He doesn’t reach out to me but he doesn’t flinch away as I stroke his upper arm. Is it wrong that my first instinct is to crawl astride his lap, suck on his tongue and tell him to get his revenge-fuck on?

  “On the plus side,” he says, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m about to save an unbelievable amount of money by canceling the wedding. Which I will probably need, because I’ve been edged out at work by Ron Weasley and I have a nasty feeling there’s a metric shit-ton of HR bullshit waiting for me following that conversation this afternoon.”

  “Ron Weasley? Wait – the Harry Potter guy?”

  “No,” says Chris. “He just looks like him. He’s ginger and English and possibly evil. Oh, and my sister is furious about this whole house situation. She says she’s not but I can tell she is.”

  “Yeah,” I say slowly. “Your life does sound kind of…explody. Is that a word?”

  “Sure. If you want. Your house, your rules. Well, half of your house.”

  “Yeah. About that. How are we gonna deal with that? Put a line of duct tape down the middle of everything?”

  “God, no,” he says. “That’s stupid. I’m sure we’ll figure out a way to deal with this. I just want to get settled in. And then I’m probably going to drink a large amount of alcohol, then go out into the woods and scream, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Totally.”

  I don’t know what Elrond did to him back in New York, but it must have been bad, because he looks crushed. No wonder I ended up with his tongue in my mouth that time, because broken is extremely my shit. I cut my teeth on chaos and grew up unable to resist a beautiful mess, and he’s that. The red rims of his eyes bring out their green, and although his shoulders are slumping they’re broad and solid. I want to take off my clothes, straddle his lap and let him suck on whatever parts of me that he hopes will soothe him.

  There’s no getting away from it: I’m a sick, sick puppy.

  “It’s a big place,” I tell him. “We won’t get under one another’s feet too much. It’s like, six bedrooms. Possibly more if you convert the attic?”

  “Convert?” he says, like he’s never heard the word before.

  “Yeah. You could build a kickass master suite up there. Amazing views. You put in new floors, sheetrock, a lick of paint here and there…” I trail off, because he’s shaking his head. Why? Why shouldn’t I do something with the place?

  “A lick of paint?” he says. “This place was built in 1876. Do you have any idea how many permits you’re going to need to alter so much as a balustrade? It’s all going to have to be done using authentic materials, to standards appropriate to the Register of Historic Places or who the hell ever. We’re talking layers and layers of bureaucracy, and that’s even before we get into…into this.”

  “This? What’s ‘this?’”

  “This situation we’re in,” he says.

  Right. Of course. “Me muscling in on your inheritance, you mean?” I say, because it’s fucking easy for him. Okay, so he’s having a shitty time right now, but he’s still got it better than me. His last place probably even had a roof, for Christ’s sake.

  “Don’t say it like that,” he says.

  “Why? It is what it is.”

  “Okay, don’t say that either.”

  “Say what?” I’ll say what I damn well like. Always have done.

  “‘It is what it is,’” he says. “It’s infuriating. It’s a tautology that means nothing.”

  “Well, excuse me.”

  He ignores my sarcasm and carries on. “I admit I was surprised to find you named in the will, okay? I had no idea who you were.” He stops for a second. “Wait, you are Jody Ohanian, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. Good. So you filed the will?”

  “Yes. My attorney told me to.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You have an attorney?”

  “Duh.” He doesn’t need to know about the eggplant, or that Dawn hasn’t passed the bar yet.

  “Good,” he says. “That’s good.” But I can tell he doesn’t mean it. If I’m lawyered up it means he’s going to find it a lot harder to get down to the time honored rich-people business of fucking over penniless chumps like me. “Hopefully we can get a speedy resolution through probate.”

  “
Uh uh. Is that rich-people speak for ‘kick the trashy cuckoo out of the nest’ so you can get on with feathering it?”

  He sighs heavily and I immediately feel bad for him again. “No,” he says. “It’s not. And can we please cool it with the class warfare tonight? Because I’m very tired and very miserable.”

  I take pity on him again. He’s right. This is hardly the right time. “You want to pick out a room?” I say.

  “Sure.”

  We got upstairs. I lead the way to the master bedroom. I’ll give it up if he wants it, although I’m not sure he wants to be reminded of the time the bed almost ate me. Or I almost ate him.

  “It’s all good,” I say. “Got running water. And a roof. I realize it’s probably not what you’re used to in Manhattan or whatever…”

  “Bed-Stuy,” he says. “I lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant.”

  Past tense already. “Well, you live here now,” I say. “You’ll like it. It’s a little chilly, but the nature is fucking beautiful. Squirrels, bunnies, deer - you name it.”

  He nods and moves onto the next room.

  “Just don’t use the back staircase from the kitchen,” I say. “Because the stair treads are all mushy and it kind of looks like the Upside Down in there.”

  Chris Solomon sets down his bag on the bed. “Thank you,” he says. “You’re very kind.” But he doesn’t smile.

  I don’t hear a sound out of him all night. Sometime around three I wake up for no reason, as if I’m expecting to hear something or react to something. I listen, wondering if I’m about to hear him crying into his pillow, but there’s nothing, and I’m relieved, like I was spared hearing something embarrassing. The only sound is the soughing of wind in the trees outside, and I shiver, close my eyes and fall right back to sleep.

  I get up early in the morning. There’s something to be said for all this country air and clean living. And work. I go to bed beat most nights, from scrubbing or fixing. I got used to it in a hurry and already I’m kind of sneering at my past self for thinking that taking off my clothes and writhing around to power ballads constituted anything like hard work. Okay, so there was the odd barbecue sauce incident, but that was just uncomfortable. Not like this. Not like the way your body groans at the end of a day’s manual labor.