Hardly Children

by Laura Adamczyk

It’s about time, said the bald one.

  The tall man stood behind the rest of them. The pins and tingles returned, moving around with so much ecstasy in his limbs that he couldn’t make them do what he wanted them to, which was get him so much closer. He wanted to get as close as he could, to see if the energy there might pass into him, that they might all share it, but he stayed back, watching his friends watch their friends do what they needed to do. The man on the ground scrunched his face into the woman’s neck. The woman on the ground pursed her lips and exhaled, as though in pain, as though blowing out a candle. The sound the two of them were making reached their friends’ ears before the breeze disappeared it in the brown leaves swirling in the open court, while the sun, noiselessly tucking itself into the horizon, put a sharp golden light on all their beautiful bodies.

  NEEDLESS TO SAY

  I’M IN THE SHOWER TRYING to shape a piece of my hair on the wall into an M. My hair’s long, but it won’t hold the letter’s turns. It looks more like a snake essing toward the end of the stall, where it might eventually flatline or curl into something unrecognizable. I used to do this with Emily when we were younger. I’d put my hair on the tile when she was going in after me, and later she would come into my room with a towel around her head and say, I love Eric Barnes too, or, You’re not fat, picking up the conversation as though I’d spoken aloud. We’d sit on my bed, pulling threads from the seams of my quilt, and I’d tell her what I wasn’t able to before. But those talks only lasted a few seasons at best, and there have been so many seasons since then.

  SORRY, EM, I’m trying to spell out, because I know she’s feeling down, but it looks more like SORRIES, and I think about just scrapping the whole thing. I want my meaning to be clear.

  Part of the problem is that this is my sister’s house. She wants me to act a certain way in it. Wash the dishes after I’ve cooked, keep my feet off the coffee table. Emily is younger than I am, but at some point she seemed to pass me by. Getting degrees, getting married. Our older sister, Joan, is more or less out of the picture, and I guess Emily felt like she had to fill the gap with regards to leadership and adult progress. But it doesn’t bother me. I kind of like being taken care of.

  The other part is that Emily’s husband, Will, used to live in this house. That is, until six months ago, when he caught her having an emotional affair with the manager of a La Quinta a few towns over. She’s the manager of a La Quinta here, and the two of them met at some regional what-have-you conference. At least that’s what our cousin Stacy told me. Stacy is no stranger to gossip, so if she knows something, then it’s safe to say that everyone else knows it or will know it very soon. Needless to say, it was disappointing to hear this kind of thing secondhand.

  Anyway, Will ended things and took half their stuff with him to some resort town in Arizona, a place where they probably still have a few real quintas hanging about, so now Emily needs me. That’s what Stacy said. She was the one who suggested I move in, help out around the house. Provide moral support. I’ve decided I’m more of a seen-and-not-heard moral supporter, like someone bidding on a silent auction. Emily doesn’t talk about Will, and I don’t like to mention sore subjects if I can avoid them.

  If I had to put a name on it, I’d say Emily just seems distracted. That is, she concentrates very intensely on things that aren’t Will. She moves around the house with a focus so acute as to eliminate the thought of anything but the task before her. She scrubs the kitchen backsplash until the enamel starts to wear; she eats apples like she’s punishing them for ever having existed. The socks I leave on the living room floor get her very focused indeed. And she’s always on the phone with work. Our parents left us a nice amount of money when they died, which made employment, how shall I say, optional. So it still surprises me when she leaves the house in the afternoons wearing a blazer and chunky black shoes, or when I hear her talking about a “perfect sell,” which I first heard as perfect cell—C-E-L-L—as though all the hotel rooms were cells, like in a prison. How odd, I thought. Those manager types sure are cold! But a perfect sell—S-E-L-L—is when all the rooms (or cells) are full. That’s her goal every night, filling the rooms up with people.

  Ours is a shitty college town, and I can’t imagine anyone coming in on a Tuesday to check out the pool hall on Main or the bowling alley across from the twenty-four-hour laundromat, let alone enough people to fill an eighty-four-room La Quinta every night. But somehow she does it. She cares very intensely about certain things, which also seems to be part of the problem. She cares so much, and it sets her up for some real disappointment. I, on the other hand, take pleasure in life’s smallest details. For example, I’m really proud of some other things I accomplished in the bathroom this morning. So proud that I was thinking of leaving some evidence behind for Emily, but her sense of humor has been off as of late, and I’m trying to be sensitive.

  After showering, I go for a walk. It’s only eleven, but already the heat is serious, so I stay in the shade and move as slowly as I can without stalling out. I like to make my time outside the house last.

  I turn onto the street behind the grade school and a squirrel bursts out from a pile of cut grass. Motherfucker, I hiss, my body tensing with reflex. The squirrel immediately scurries off like it just grabbed my wallet. Come back, little squirrely, I say, but the damn thing has already disappeared. This town is filled with squirrels. They were imported some hundred years ago from England, and now the town is overrun. I can’t drive to get a gallon of milk without hitting one, almost hitting one, or seeing the poor, bloody result of someone else having hit one. Their bodies lie out flat in the road, their gray, puffy tails quivering in the breeze like a flag casting a warning.

  The library’s automatic doors open before me like welcoming arms. I love it here—the return slot with its tiny rubber conveyer belt, the weekend book sale, the take-no-prisoners air-conditioning. And the librarians, whose sole civic duty seems to be to act nice to me. They know my name and ask me how my day is going, what is new in my life. I tell them, Oh, fine, Oh, nothing. And then I do my loop around the whole place. New music, new movies. I go upstairs to the magazine racks, ascending the wide blond steps. The light comes in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and I step into it, enjoying the feeling of being in a place of beauty and importance. I check all the new issue covers—glistening pictures of cakes and shiny, famous faces and cartoons of animals in business suits. The weeklies, the monthlies, it all helps me mark the time. Like going to work, like it’s all something the town needs me to keep an eye on.

  Sometimes I’ll chat up the young man at circulation. The library has automatic checkout stations, but I figure he must get bored just standing behind the desk waiting for someone’s card to mess up. That and I like looking at his face. Everything about him is angular yet soft—his linen shirt is tucked into his khaki pants and his brown hair falls over his eyes. Refined, but not too refined, like someone who attended prep school on scholarship. I’d put him around my age, but sometimes he scolds me for keeping a particular book or movie too long, and it makes him seem older. I like it when he tsk-tsks me.

  Hey, Claire, he says.

  Hi, Thomas.

  He shifts my stack of books across the counter and gets to rubbing them over the magnetic plate.

  How are you all doing? I ask. Super busy?

  Well, the summers always are, but we handle it all right. He smiles and then shifts his gaze to his computer screen.

  I’m not really doing too much these days, I continue. Well, my sister—I’m taking care of my sister.

  Oh, dear, is she all right? The concern in his voice takes me aback.

  Oh, yeah, she’s okay. Just a little psychic malady. Nothing a little sun and St.-John’s-wort won’t fix. It keeps me busy, but I have some free time too.

  I then hint to him how good I am at organizing other people’s stuff and how it might be fun to work at the library myself, since I’m here so often, and, no, I don’t actually have a library degre
e, but I do own a couple of different pairs of glasses, several pairs of dark-colored tights, and slip-on shoes that don’t make a whole lot of noise when I walk in them. So, you know.

  You’re too funny, Claire, he says, shaking his head. He slides the stack of books back to me over the counter. Which do you think you’ll read first?

  I sigh and pick up the titles one at a time.

  Well, Charlotte’s Web is always a good one. I like the drawings. And Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is pretty cool. I like imagining their little outfits. And Old Yeller always brings the house down …

  I’m noticing a theme here, he says.

  What? Animals? I look down at the names.

  Yes, and, well … Maybe you’d like some of the books upstairs too.

  Upstairs?

  You know, Virginia Woolf. Oscar Wilde. I bet you’d like Dorothy Parker.

  I purse my lips. I’ve heard some of those names, of course. I went to college—for a couple of years—but they don’t feel like anything I need.

  Maybe when I’m finished here, I say, and I square my stack and give it a pat.

  * * *

  EMILY, LET’S GO to Sal’s.

  Emily turns a page of her book.

  Emily, Sal’s, I repeat.

  Today is her day off, and we’ve had a very civilized, quiet morning of reading and drinking iced coffee in the living room. I’m so restless I want to peel my skin off and wear it as a housecoat.

  Emily, Sal’s.

  That place is gross, she replies.

  Come on, you need some more stuff around here.

  I think I can do better than the Salvation Army. She doesn’t look up from her book.

  Not better deals. Not better deals.

  I can afford new things, she says.

  But you might find a real find there. Find a find.

  Find a find? I feel like I need a shower after coming back from that place.

  Then we could go swimming at your work. After.

  Gross.

  Please, please, Em. (I’m good at begging, I know. It’s a talent and I like doing it.) Come on, why not?

  I don’t feel like it, so why should I?

  You know who you sound like, don’t you?

  Finally she looks up from her book. She gives me her sweet death eyes—angry but also amused by my brashness, like, Ooh, someone wants to get hurt, do they?

  Fine, she says, her smile slow and controlled. I’ll get my purse. You drive.

  * * *

  I KIND OF LIKE to say estranged. We’re estranged. Our estranged older sister. The word feels luxurious, filled with mystery, as though we have a crazy woman up in the attic giggling maniacally and setting fires, a woman trying desperately to kill us. What I wouldn’t give to have spent time in an orphanage!

  The problem with Joan was there was never a standard deviation; there was no room for error. You either gave her exactly what she wanted or it was No, no, no. You’re doing it wrong. We don’t like to admit the ways we’re becoming like her. You know who you sound like, don’t you? It’s our greatest insult, but we use it sparingly to maintain its pungency. We discovered rather early on that bitch meant less and less the more you said it.

  Three years ago. The morning after Christmas. The four of us crammed around Will and Em’s apartment kitchen table. Red and green and blue lights framed the archway into the living room. We’d just finished our coffee and pecan pie breakfast when Joan carefully pushed her plate aside, cleared her throat, and said, So. (She had such a way with beginnings!)

  So. She said it was nearing the one-year anniversary of our parents’ death, and she wanted us to mark the time by putting their remains into the wind. We need to scatter them, she said, like it was a word we didn’t know. She lived two whole time zones away, a coastal extreme, but thought we should meet where our parents had lived the last year of their lives, which would mean a plane ride into the desert for Em and me. The plane our parents had been in returned to the earth soon after leaving it. But the distance was enough. Having us get into any flying machine seemed like Asking For It. We could drive, but Emily would have to reschedule her dress fitting and work wedding shower. She turned to Will for backup, but he’d slid into the living room to play his new single-shooter video game, a pair of headphones over his ears.

  Can’t we do it another time? I asked. Does it have to be the exact anniversary? I didn’t say so, but I also had plans. A group of kids from downtown had recently taken a shine to me, and they were gearing up for a rager of a Groundhog Day party. I didn’t want to miss it. I liked how they had no jobs and never talked about their pasts or asked too many personal questions.

  It doesn’t mean we don’t love them, Emily said, her voice quiet and explanatory. But surely we can wait. I’ve got so much going on before March.

  Joan took a long breath in and out, putting a hand to her forehead. I just know if we don’t do it now, we’re never going to do it, she said. It threw me how strong her feelings could be—her voice a heated whisper—when they were so different from my own.

  Months later, at Em’s wedding reception in Gold Room B of the downtown La Quinta, Joan told us she’d done it herself.

  I’m sorry that you were too busy having a shower, she nodded to Emily, and partying with children, she wiggled her fingers at me, but I couldn’t wait.

  You had no right to do that, Emily said.

  I had to.

  We asked you to wait.

  I told you we couldn’t. They’re our parents.

  I wanted to say, Were, were our parents, but I was trying to resist any feelings that might put me in the coatroom for the rest of the night.

  And where are you partying? Emily turned to me.

  And who uses “party” as a verb anymore? I asked.

  They both gave me a look that said, Now is not the time to get smart.

  Luckily, Will bounded up just then, his suit jacket missing and his tie threatening escape. Sorry, ladies, he said, but I’ve got to take my lady. Before I could tell him that he needed to work on his delivery, he whisked Emily away to cut the cake into its separate pieces.

  One week, two weeks, two months later, Joan didn’t call us, so we didn’t call her. Or, we didn’t call her, so she didn’t call us. I know it’s silly for it to still matter, but it’s hard to break the status quo, no matter the status, and I’m not really the leader of this outfit. It all leaves me with that morning-after-Christmas feeling—seeing our unwrapped presents stacked individually in Em’s old living room, the tree heavy with inherited ornaments. That’s the thing about Christmas. I love the trees and the lights and the garland, but I want to take it all down as soon as it’s over.

  * * *

  I ALWAYS FEEL a little odd driving us anywhere. Like I’m underage or drunk or otherwise unfit.

  Emily’s got her phone to her ear, listening to a voicemail, and I can hear a deep voice unfolding from the tiny speaker. She closes her phone and puts it in her bag.

  Was that La Quinta? I ask.

  I’ve taken to calling her mystery dude “La Quinta,” which brings to mind a man with a thin, dark mustache and bolero jacket. I imagine him saying Emily like Em-ee-lee, each syllable a sexy little secret between the two of them. In reality, he probably has adult acne and wears a lot of polos.

  We’re not talking anymore, she says, and looks out the window.

  Who was it then?

  My doctor’s office.

  What do they want?

  For me to call them.

  What for?

  I don’t know. She digs around in her purse and then pulls out a tube of chapstick.

  Aren’t you going to call them?

  Later.

  You can call them now. I don’t mind.

  That’s okay. She rubs the balm over her lips then replaces the cap as on a stick of glue.

  I park in the back at the Salvation Army. We open up the double doors. The warehouse is scattered with piles and piles of stuff. Clothes, housewares,
books. No shelving, no clothes racks, just pile after pile, like an industrial yard full of garbage waiting for a band of hoboes to come along and set it all on fire.

  This is the wrong one, Emily says.

  No it’s not, I reply.

  She drops her shoulders. You’ve got to be kidding me.

  There are two Salvation Armies in town. The regular one, the one with eighties blazers and bins full of balled-up scarves, and the reject one, the one that takes all the stuff that doesn’t sell at the regular Sal’s. We’re at the reject one, the one that sells by the pound.

  I approach a pile. Shoes without their mates, bras the color of stained teeth. I pick up a vase.

  Look at this vase! I hold it up like a trophy. It’s purple with two turquoise dolphins on either side. They’re curved into S’s with their heads pointed up, mouths open in smiles.

  That’s nice, Emily says.

  Don’t you love it? I can’t believe it didn’t sell at the other place.

  It’s truly a wonder, she says.

  I wonder how much it costs. I weigh it in my hand.

  You’re not buying that.

  I want it.

  You’re not bringing that thing into my home.

  But look at them—they’re making a heart with their bodies. Their dolphin bodies. They’re saying, I love you, other dolphin!

  I don’t care what they’re saying.

  They’re mammals, I reply, as though their possible relation to eels were causing the holdup.

  She stuffs her hands into her shorts and walks down the way, too quickly to really look at anything.

  I get back to the pile. I tuck the vase beneath my armpit so I can pick up an old rubber doormat, but when I stand to examine it, the vase takes a dive to the floor, and one of the dolphins cracks off. At the far wall, an employee heaves a bag of garbage over his shoulder and walks toward the exit. I push the vase pieces back into the pile with my foot, hoping they’ll be able to keep themselves together in all that mess.

  * * *

  I SKIPPED A COUPLE OF DAYS of washing my hair, so when I shower this afternoon, gobs and gobs come out. I pick it from my palms and place each strand on the tile. Emily works the four-to-midnight shift, and most days I manage to get in before her. It’s just that sometimes the hair dries. It curls away from the tile and falls to the tub with all the intention of leaves from trees.