by Karen Ellis
“There you fucking are, Crisco King!” She bops across the street, smiling. “Guess they didn’t give you life in prison.”
“Not yet.” He also smiles. Something about this girl is just so funny. He’s glad he came.
Simultaneously, they raise hands and high-five.
Back in the winter, Glynnie thought he was handsome, not-her-type kind of handsome, and not because he’s African American or a public school kid but because he’s too, well, clean-cut somehow, despite the fralo. His round face has a shine, his dark eyes a sparkle, his chin a deep dimple, and his hair, his hair is so black it glistens. His jeans look new and his white high-tops are weirdly spotless. He’s wholesome, is what he is, in a way that none of her private school friends are. She might call that ironic if she were writing a paper about socioeconomic disparities (or something), which she isn’t, thank God.
She asks, “What’s up?”
“Not much. You?”
“Well,” she says, “I graduated last week. Miracle of miracles.”
“I didn’t know you were a senior. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. You too.”
“Well.” He licks his bottom lip, lets his eyes fall away from her face. “I kinda missed my graduation this morning.”
“Seriously?”
“Just got released this afternoon.”
“You were there all night?”
“You want to know what for?”
“Yeah. I do.” She parks herself on the nearest stoop and pats the spot next to her.
He sits down but makes sure to leave room between them—he doesn’t want her getting the wrong idea. He likes her, a lot, but not like that, and it isn’t because she’s white. His own mother is white. His grandparents are white. His cousins on that side are white. It’s because there’s so much to her that’s, well, raw, and it scares him a little bit.
He tells her, “I rode my bike on the sidewalk.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s why I got arrested.”
“You got arrested for that?”
“Well, maybe also for calling the cop Franz Kafka.”
Her laugh is more a shout, loud and sudden. “I didn’t know that was illegal either.”
“Possibly it was also the tone of my voice.” He grins. “And how I dropped a few f-bombs into it. Anyway, I kind of wanted to tell you since you saw me, you know, up there.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone.” Did she? She can’t remember. “Is that why you’re here—so I’d know for sure you’re not an ax murderer?”
He laughs. Ax murderer—as if. In all his life, it’s the last thing anyone would have thought of him, and as soon as it crosses his mind it feels like a…what? A kind of grace. “I had to get out of the apartment. Me and my mom, we had words.”
“I bet. So you missed your own graduation. That’s epic.”
“I was supposed to be valedictorian.”
“Valedictorian at Stuy. I heard you were going to Princeton.”
“I was.”
“Was? Really?” Now she wonders if maybe, just maybe, the real reason he’s here is to commiserate with a known fuckup. An expert fuckup. A fuckup so good at fucking up that she could draw her parents’ disappointed faces from memory. “You mean they already kicked you out and you haven’t even gotten there yet?” Impressive.
“I don’t know for sure,” he explains. “First thing when I walk in the door, my mom’s like, ‘The Princeton dean’s office left you a message on the home phone. They want you to call back as soon as you can.’”
“Did you call?”
Crisp shakes his head. “I couldn’t handle it.” He breathes back a sharp memory of arriving home. His mother, sitting on the couch (which at night she’d unfold and turn into her bed) as if she was waiting for him, wearing the new dress she’d bought for his graduation and with her hair professionally blow-dried, silky straight instead of the usual frizzy curls. She was even wearing makeup and high heels, as if some small part of her had clung to a hope that he’d make it out in time for graduation.
“I’m sorry I let you down, Mom.”
“It’s you who should feel let down,” she said. “By yourself.”
Silence. He couldn’t believe this was happening. “Where’s Babu and Dedu?”
“Your grandparents aren’t feeling well. They’re resting.”
“I know how much everyone was looking forward to today, Mom.”
More silence, like cold rain, from a mother who had only ever been warm sunshine. Was it because he was technically a man now? Because he was starting to resemble his father? Was this how she’d looked at Mo when he turned around and left his teenage wife and baby without once glancing back, ever? The phantom who abandoned his half-white son with the absurd name of Titus Crespo.
He was back in the hall and halfway down the stairs faster than she could stand up and follow him in her heels. He heard her clopping steps and then her voice filled the stairwell: “Come back!”
He still hears it, hours later, sitting beside Glynnie on someone’s front stoop with twilight starting to gather around them. He’s starkly aware of her family’s imposing brownstone across the street, with its window pots sprouting red geraniums and dangling vines with tender heart-shaped leaves, the clean glass winking his reflection back at him as if to say, You’re not meant to see in.
“So your parents,” Glynnie says, “must be pissed at you. Mine would be.”
“Parent—mom. My dad’s not around. I don’t know if she’s pissed, but she’s definitely disappointed.”
“Have any brothers or sisters?”
Crisp shakes his head. “It’s just us. Well, and my grandparents.”
“Wow, three generations under one roof. That would drive me crazy.”
“It doesn’t bother me—my grandparents are cool.” Just as sunset eases into a darker shade of purple, Crisp notices a sudden shift in the expression of a white guy at the end of the block, walking down the sidewalk in their direction. Suit and tie, briefcase, Whole Foods shopping bag, stiff gait that sends a rod up Crisp’s spine.
Glynnie says, “I saw all my grandparents last week at graduation and after for lunch, and, like, it was nice of them to come, but all they wanted to talk to me about was why were my jeans ripped—I mean, I had that gown thingy over them, so who cares?—and, you know, college.” She feels a warble of gratification at the memory of how uncomfortable her choice of clothes made her mother: Mags O’Leary-Dreyfus, casting director, anorexic stick figure in a bright floral thousand-dollar Dolce & Gabbana dress that screamed I’m not actually fifty years old! and a pair of three-inch Ferragamo pumps with a perky bow as if a little bird had landed on her flawlessly manicured toes and the long vertical ridge of her shinbones rising above her skin like the sharp edge of a knife. Glynnie would never be like her mother. Ever.
“Where are you going to college?” Crisp immediately wishes he phrased it differently. “Are you going?” would have been better, more open-ended, for a kid like her.
“Sarah Lawrence, supposedly, eventually. It’s where my mom went.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m supposed to take some courses at the New School next year—you know, raise my grades—and then I’m supposed to apply.”
“Sounds like you’re not into the plan,” Crisp says.
Glynnie shrugs, her slender collarbone lifting and making what looks like wings under her pale skin. “I’m not.”
“What would you rather be doing?”
“I don’t really know—that’s the problem. But what’s the difference? My future is set in stone. First I’m going to Outward Bound for the summer, then I’m living at home with my asshole parents and taking courses in the fall and filling out the Common App. They obviously think Outward Bound’s going to give me a good essay topic, but it won’t work. I know it won’t.”
“You’re not eighteen?”
“I am, but so what?”
“You’re a legal adult—you can make your
own decisions.”
“Technically. But without them I’ve got no place to live, no money, so what am I supposed to do?”
Work, he wants to tell her. Find a place to live, figure it out on your own. But he doesn’t say it; shouldn’t it be obvious? Two shades scroll down simultaneously on the parlor floor of a brownstone next to the Dreyfus house.
“Are you eighteen?” she asks him.
“I just turned nineteen.” In a year he’ll be twenty, then twenty-one, then twenty-two, then twenty-three and either a Princeton graduate or someone’s janitor. His hands curl into fists. “Maybe I should head home now.”
“Hang out a minute,” she says. “So what are you doing this summer?”
“I’ve got a gig delivering for a restaurant and in my spare time I thought I’d learn German.” He cringes as soon as that spills out; he’s long realized that his itch for mastering foreign languages comes off as weird to kids his age.
“You mean, the language?”
“It’s kind of my thing—it’s like a freak talent. Totally useless. What about you?” Aching to change the subject. “What’ve you been doing since graduation?”
“Seriously, how many languages do you know?”
“Six,” he admits. “I mean, not including English.”
“Which ones?”
“Okay. Well…French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian. And Latin. I mean, it’s the root of the romance languages, so once you know that it’s easy to…never mind.”
“No, Crisp, it’s so cool. I wish I had a brain like that.” She raps her knuckles against her skull and asks herself, “Anyone home? Well, no one ever accused me of being smart.”
“You’re smart, Glynnie.” Giving her the benefit of the doubt.
She smiles, grateful for that. “You really want to know what I’ve been up to since graduation?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Hunting down beads to make a charm bracelet for my mom’s birthday this weekend. I’ve probably been to every bead store in the city, plus online. Sad, right?”
“Not at all,” Crisp assures her. “It’s really nice of you.”
“Well, if you saw the beads, you might not think so.”
“Like what?”
“Never mind.”
“I told you about my languages. Tell me about your beads.”
“Well…skulls and daggers and stuff like that. My mom’s going to hate it.” Glynnie grins, because offending the stylish Mags O’Leary-Dreyfus is exactly the idea. Payback for her mother’s master plan for her betterment, starting with a survivalist summer in the wild.
“That’s kind of…I don’t know.” Infantile and harsh, is what he stops himself from saying.
The white man in the suit pauses in front of them. Crisp regulates his pulse with a deep breath.
“Glynnie, you okay here?” The man’s voice thick with misgiving. And the way his gaze slides to Crisp—so hot with bigotry he can almost feel his skin melt off. Crisp leans forward, about to stand; it’s definitely time to head home now. But Glynnie stops him by throwing an arm around his shoulders.
“Everything’s great, John,” edging her tone with sarcasm, hoping he feels the cut. “Why do you ask?”
John’s face tightens. He keeps walking. At the next house he climbs the stoop and lets himself through the front door.
“Fuck that racist!” Glynnie lets her arm fall away.
“Never mind. I’m used to it.”
“Now I feel shitty.”
“Don’t let it bother you.” He’s positioning his buds to replant them in his ears, knowing the music will help, when she stops his hand midair.
She says, “Well it’s got to bother you.”
“Not really. I mean, a little bit, but I get it all the time.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
“What are you listening to?”
He tells her, “The Strokes.”
“What song?”
“‘Last Nite.’”
“Cool. I love Julian Casablancas’s voice. I’ll sync.” She positions the soft earpieces, drowning out street noise, and sends the song from her phone to her Beats. Then, to help them float above the asshole neighbor’s racist bullshit, she digs into her front pocket for the roach she knows is there. Except it isn’t. “Shit!”
“You don’t have to shout!” he shouts.
They both free their ears at once, look at each other, and laugh.
“Hey, Crispy Cream, do you get high?” She mimes holding a joint to her lips and sucks in air.
“Sometimes.” On weekends, when his work is done. Never during the week. And never within a five-block radius of his apartment building—far enough away that his mother and grandparents would never suspect.
She digs a hand into her other pocket, comes up empty. “I thought I had some on me but as usual I’m wrong. I know where we can get some, though.”
“Right now?”
“You have someplace better to be?”
He thinks of his mother and grandparents, waiting for him at home, and asks, “How far?”
“Red Hook. We could walk.”
“My dad grew up in Red Hook,” Crisp says. He’s studied maps of the area, researched its history, written about it for school, but never wanted to visit in person—or, more accurately, never allowed himself to want to. All his life, that slip of land hooking into the bay has been forbidden territory.
“Cool. You in?”
Is he? The depletion of a night in jail is powerful, the look on his mother’s face a looming shadow, and the way Glynnie’s neighbor’s eyes just cut him down to size…well.
Impulsively, he answers, “Sure.”
“I’ll see if my connect’s around.” Glynnie thumbs a text to JJ, her dealer, who answers almost instantly. She briefly wonders if she should run inside for her purse, in case she needs something, but doesn’t bother. She’ll be home in an hour or so.
7
The color of dusk as it slips into night needs its own word. Crisp contemplates what that might be as he walks beside Glynnie up to Court Street, the same song in their ears. They turn left and pass a funeral parlor, a Thai restaurant, and an artisanal soap store pumping the scent of—what?—honeysuckle through its open door onto the sidewalk. The word he’s looking for will need to capture the rich and gradual melding of lavender and blue and violet and almost black. Blauvet, maybe, he thinks, realizing it’s clunky and he’ll have to tweak it later. You could leave the t silent or omit it and add an accent to the e, and voilà, it would sound a little bit French. He hopes to take his mother to Paris someday for a visit—hoped. It won’t happen if he doesn’t make it to Princeton first. He should go home. Suddenly, an olfactive memory of days-old pee returns him to the crowded jail cell. He snorts out a blast of air to dispel the rank odor memory and breathes in one last note of honeysuckle before exiting its range. The blauvet (blauvé) night swallows them as side by side they dance to music no one else can hear.
Now, Glynnie thinks, finally it’s starting to feel like a celebration. It’s pretty cool that Crisp showed up. Ballsy. Sweet, even, how he went out of his way to make sure she knows why he was up there in that cage playing basketball with the other inmates, who, before this, she always assumed were the kind of people she would never cross paths with. See how much she’s learned in the last half hour, Mr. Harkavy, sophomore sociology (C minus), just by actually encountering a real person with real problems in the real world, as opposed to reading statistics in a book? Glynnie knows she isn’t stupid or hopeless (despite the lengthy narrative commentary of nearly every single end semester report), but she also knows that she hasn’t stumbled on the locus of her intelligence, not yet. But she will. She feels it. And look: Crisp Crespo, academic wonder, is hanging out with her on what was supposed to be his graduation night.
She taps his arm and holds up her phone.
“Sure,” he says. He doesn’t much like selfies but everyone else does a
nd so he goes with the flow. They come to a halt and press their faces together, buggy-eyed and tongues wagging, laughing at nothing. He waits while she posts it somewhere.
The song ends. Without discussing it, they both tune in to whatever they feel like.
Walking again, darker, cooler, she feels bad that he missed his graduation when it sounds like for him school has been okay. If she missed her graduation, no one would have been surprised—a little annoyed, maybe, but not broken. They would have all just gone to lunch anyway. She glances at him. Valedictorian, and he wasn’t there. His moves are jazzy, with the occasional pop of an elbow or knee. What’s he listening to? For her the groove now is Beyoncé.
Crisp wonders what she’s got on her Beats now that their song is over. She’s swaggering like it’s hip-hop, white kid hip-hop, which he hates because he’s half white kid himself, though never acknowledged as such. He pushes that thought away and lets Thelonious flow through his mind.
At Union Street, they dance their way across the bridge that spans the expressway, a traffic-roaring separation that feels like leaving one town behind, entering another. Just ahead, loading docks and the East River. The bright puzzle of Manhattan’s skyline recedes as they turn onto Van Brunt Street and follow the luminous black seam of water as it edges them deeper into Red Hook.
Glynnie leads the way along Van Brunt Street, the commercial strip, until stores, people, even Fairway Market and its night shoppers vanish into the background. Moonglow brightens the way to an old warehouse that fills a slip of land between Beard Street and the Buttermilk Channel, where it siphons into the bay. The first time she came here she was scared shitless, scared but excited, and then she met the dealer, JJ, and her fear evaporated. Now she likes coming here. She notices that except for walking, Crisp has gone still, his hands are jammed in his pockets, and there’s that zipped-up look on his face again, like when her fuckwad neighbor John stopped to make sure everything was “okay,” which is the opposite of what he really meant, the racist asshole.
