Small Change

by Roan Parrish

  “Ginger, finally! I’ve called you a thousand times!”

  “Yeah. Very early in the morning, when you knew I’d still be asleep, so I find myself questioning the sincerity of your desire to talk to me, sis.”

  “Most people grow out of sleeping until noon after their hormones stabilize, you know.”

  My sister had the same ability to irritate me now as she had when she was a know-it-all teenager. She and my mother were twin engines of passive-aggression and judgment, and nothing I’d ever tried had the power to bring down the plane. So mostly I just did the only thing I could, and refused to take them seriously.

  “Well, I guess I’m just permanently unstable,” I told her cheerfully. “So, what can this unresponsive, unstable sleep addict do for you?”

  “Well, obviously I need to know what you want to do about Thanksgiving.”

  My sister had this way of speaking like she worried that if she didn’t really hit the important words hard then no one would understand what she was saying.

  “Oh, of course, obviously.” I rolled my eyes. “What do you mean, do about it? Aren’t you guys going to Uncle Saul and Aunt Jo’s like usual?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to discuss with you, if you’d ever answer your phone. Uncle Saul had some kind of…cardiac episode or something, I don’t know, and so we can’t just ask Aunt Jo to go ahead as if everything is normal!”

  “Okay, well why don’t you just invite them to Mom and Dad’s?”

  “It’s just asking an awful lot of Mom, don’t you think?”

  “Well, I’m not asking for anything from Mom because I don’t even know if I’m coming. Thought: have you asked Mom what she wants to do?”

  “Of course, but you know Mom. She’ll say she’s happy to do it but she’ll stress over the whole thing.”

  “Yeah, Eva, I do know Mom, and that’s how I know—as do you—that she’s gonna stress over everything no matter what. So just ask her. She’s an adult. If she says she wants to do it, then she’ll do it. And if she doesn’t want to, she can say that.”

  Though she wouldn’t. My mother and my sister were allergic to saying what they meant. There was always some ulterior motive, always some prize for something lurking behind what was said, even if they were the only ones who knew what it was. I’d stopped playing along years ago but even opting out had its price—it implied complicity.

  “You have somewhere you’d rather be, I assume, as usual?”

  It had been years since I’d spent Thanksgiving with my family. Usually Daniel and I hung out together, or I kept the shop open late, since there were always people seeking refuge from their own families. This year, I would probably just hang out at home by myself. It seemed nice to take a breather. I didn’t answer fast enough though.

  “Mom and Dad won’t be around forever, you know,” Eva continued. “If you ever bothered to call them then you would know that Dad’s not doing that well.”

  A bolt of panic shot through me. Somehow, I’d never considered the possibility that I needed to worry about my parents. My mother seemed too mean to die, and my father wouldn’t dare without my mother’s permission. Even though I didn’t get along with my family, the thought of losing them had shaken me. “What? What’s wrong with Dad?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Ginger.” She spat my name out and I wondered if she’d just made that comment to needle me?

  “Seriously, Eva, what the fuck. Is something wrong or not?”

  She sighed in this long-suffering way that my mother may as well have copyrighted. “You know it would be nice if you could pretend you cared about Mom and Dad,” Eva said, and I could practically picture her nose up in the air.

  “Yeah, it’d be nice if they actually cared about me,” I muttered.

  “Well it’s not like you really make it easy for them, though, do you?”

  And there it was: the harsh reality that there was no such thing as unconditional love. There was only acting in ways that made people decide you were worthy of it.

  “I don’t really think my job is to make myself easy to like,” I bit off.

  It had been the hardest lesson to learn; taken the longest to believe, since everything insisted the opposite. I still had to repeat it in my head sometimes, and even then it didn’t always work.

  “Yes, well, we all know how well that’s turned out for you,” Eva sniffed.

  And that was me at capacity. I had to hang up before I got caught in the quicksand of Eva.

  “Okay, well, a customer’s here, I gotta go,” I lied.

  “Just think about Mom and Dad for once, okay?” Eva said as I ended the call.

  I dropped the phone on the couch, suddenly exhausted. It was the typical Eva-effect. I gave myself ten minutes to stare into space and sulk.

  I was over changing who I was to try and make my parents happy; had been for years. But the fact that I’d stopped trying didn’t mean I ever stopped wishing things were different. My mom had always found fault with everything I did. With everything I was. The things I most valued in myself—my strength, my outspokenness, my self-possession—she demeaned. To her, I wasn’t strong, I was rude and thoughtless. I wasn’t outspoken, I was antagonistic and embarrassing. I wasn’t self-possessed, I was a misfit rebelling because she wished for acceptance.

  And whenever I’d allowed myself to hope that my father might come to my defense, might see something positive in me where she saw only faults, I’d been disappointed. I wasn’t sure if he actually agreed with her or simply refused to argue, but it didn’t really matter; the effect was the same.

  At ten, I’d been confused by their lack of approval. At thirteen, I’d been hurt. At sixteen I’d been furious. And at twenty, resigned. These days, I liked to think I saw them more clearly than they saw me. But the truth was it was infuriatingly easy for them to get in my head sometimes. To hear my mother’s voice as I looked at myself in the mirror, or my father’s silence as I searched for a dissenting opinion.

  It had been different for Eva. She’d always cared what my mother thought and fit in with it. And the parts of her that didn’t fit? I wagered she’d sloughed them off as systematically as I’d encouraged mine to show themselves.

  I forced myself to shrug off thoughts of my family, throw on jeans and a threadbare Skinny Puppy concert tee, and drag myself downstairs to check on the shop and see if there was anything I needed to take care of after my weekend absence.

  “Hey,” Marcus said, looking up from tattooing text on a woman’s ribs. “How was it?”

  “Exhausting,” I sighed. “But not bad. The tattooing was great, though my hands are officially dead.”

  I knew what he was most waiting to hear about though.

  “Neither Sheila or Liza D. are gonna work out, M. I’m really sorry.”

  Marcus made a face. “Shoot. How come?”

  “How come, what?” Morgan asked, sliding into the desk chair to run her customer’s credit card.

  I sighed and picked at my nail polish. I hated to disappoint them. “Sheila was going to move to Philly in a few months, but I guess her kid got into some super special arts school in Denver so she’s not going to leave now. Liza D. was looking really promising because since she and her wife split she seemed kinda jazzed to get out of New York for part of the week, but she says she can’t deal with the commute. Especially since in the winter she’d maybe get stuck here or there and miss clients or be stranded, et cetera.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Morgan said as her client thanked her and left. “I wouldn’t want to either.”

  “Yeah, I know, me neither. I just really thought she’d fit in here. Both of them would’ve.”

  We sat in dismayed silence for a minute.

  “Oh, one good thing though. Eddie Sparks came to my booth and was really into my work. Not just the tattoos, but my paintings as well. He took some postcards and said he’d definitely be in touch. Which, it may never happen, but it’d be great exposure for the shop.”

&
nbsp; Morgan and Marcus both gritted their teeth, and I realized that I’d essentially just said in one breath that we were about to get busier and that we didn’t have any backup. Great.

  The door opened, breaking the tense silence, and Christopher walked in, phone in one hand and a coffee in the other. He seemed surprised to see me.

  “Hey, I was just about to text you to see if I could come up,” he said. “I brought coffee in the hopes that I could bribe you.”

  “Giiirl,” Morgan said softly and shook her head.

  Christopher looked pleased with himself. He held out the coffee, like a morsel to lure a skittish cat close, and when I took it he slid a hand around my shoulder and bent to kiss my cheek, his stubble a welcome scritch, his smell delicious.

  He was wearing black jeans and an olive green T-shirt under his navy pea coat. I liked when he wore green because it made his hair and eyes look even brighter. “Where do you get your shirts?” I asked

  He narrowed his eyes. “Is this a sartorial intervention?”

  Marcus laughed. “Ginger thinks people should wear whatever they want at all times, so I strongly doubt it.”

  I dipped a curtsy, holding out the hem of my oversized shirt so the concert dates of the Too Dark Park tour stretched around me.

  “Yeah, no, I like them,” I said. They’re just…unusual colors for those kind of undershirts and it’s like this mystery I’ve wondered about ever since I met you.”

  He leaned against the counter and smiled a little. “A mystery, huh? Maybe I shouldn’t reveal my secrets. So what possibilities have you considered?”

  I ticked them off on my fingers. “That you used to work at a T-shirt factory and could take home free ones. That you have some extreme form of color blindness and have gone through life thinking they’re all black this whole time. Ummm, oh! That you once killed a man in a white T-shirt and as you watched his blood stain the fabric you swore an oath never to wear another white shirt until the end of time. Uh…that you just like the colors.”

  “Wow,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t think anyone would ever guess the truth about that blood oath.”

  Morgan snorted.

  “I had a roommate years ago who used to buy these big packs of the white undershirts at one of those box stores. He wore them every day under everything. But for some reason the brand he bought always came with one colored shirt—maybe to get you to buy more colors? So you’d forget it was in there and wash them all together, ruining the white ones and forcing you to buy more? No clue. But he wouldn’t wear them and I kind of liked them so he just gave them to me. We lived together for three years and he went through those damn shirts like kleenex, so I have a lot.”

  I grinned. That was fucking adorable. “Not as dramatic as the blood oath,” I said, shaking my head in faux disappointment.

  “Few things are. How was New York?”

  Morgan’s next client came in, and I maneuvered Christopher to the side so we weren’t blocking the counter. “Eh, it was pretty good. Mostly I’m just totally zonked and even though I slept a lot I kinda want to go back to bed.”

  “Do you want me to go?” he asked. “I was mostly kidding about bribing you with the coffee. You can keep it,” he said, laughing because I’d instinctively pulled the cup close to me like he might take it back.

  His smile was quickly becoming one of my favorite things to see, his laugh one of my favorite to hear. Did I want him to go?

  I was peopled-out, but I found myself really wanting him to stay. I shrugged and the neck of my T-shirt fell off one shoulder.

  “I’m just…tired and I talked to my shithead sister before you got here, which means I’m maybe not the best company, so you might not want to hang out with me.”

  “I think I can stand it if you can.” His voice was soft and he ran a hand over my hair, then let his warm palm rest on my exposed shoulder.

  “I—okay. For a little bit?”

  He nodded and I led him upstairs. As soon as we got there, though, I realized the flaw in my plan. It was hard to just hang out and not talk when you had a small sofa and no TV. If Christopher were Daniel, we’d squeeze onto the couch and watch a movie on my laptop, or I’d put on a record and we’d lie on the floor, chatting only when we felt like it. But Christopher took up a lot more space on the couch than Daniel, and I didn’t really want to watch a movie.

  I had stopped just inside the door.

  “Want me to hug you?” Christopher asked from behind me.

  “What?”

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Well, sometimes I like a hug when I’m tired, or grumpy. So I thought maybe you would too.”

  “You? Grumpy? Yeah, right.”

  Christopher shot me a bright smile, proving my point.

  “You like hugs, huh?” I scowled, wondering who got to hug Christopher when he was tired, or if he were ever grumpy, and felt a tiny twinge in my stomach at the idea of someone else’s arms wrapped around him.

  “I do. Well, I like good ones.”

  “And do you give good ones?”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’ll think so. But if I were in the market for a hug I would definitely want a hug from me. Care to register an opinion?”

  He dropped his arms at his sides, like he was making himself ready for any potential hugging. It was kind of silly, but the second he’d said it I realized that maybe I did want a damn hug. He did look like he’d give good ones. He was broad and strong but not hard with muscle. He smelled good and was wearing a soft fabric. He didn’t have any spiky jewelry that I could see…

  I nodded and stepped into his arms, where I found myself wrapped up in probably the best hug I’d ever gotten. He held me to his chest tightly but didn’t squeeze the life out of me. He leaned into the hug like he was enjoying it, not doing me a favor. And he rested his chin on top of my head. I turned my face so my cheek was against the flat of his shoulder and let out a huge breath, relaxing into the shape of his body. I could feel the expansion of his stomach and chest as he breathed, the heat of his skin through that damn green T-shirt. The muscles of his back shifted slightly under my palms as he tipped his head forward and buried his face in my hair.

  I’d hugged Daniel occasionally, but it was always quick and fierce. Morgan and Lindsey on their birthdays. Marcus when one of us’d had a hard day. But this kind of a hug? Where I just held someone and they held me? Where we breathed together as one unit? I couldn’t remember the last time it had happened.

  Christopher smelled amazing, and the rhythm of his breath was lulling.

  I let go reluctantly when it seemed like an inappropriately long time had gone by, and he looked a little disappointed. He trailed a hand down my arm like he was reluctant to break contact, and I leaned into it.

  “So, what’s the deal with your sister?”

  “Er, she called and I accidentally answered.” He raised an eyebrow in question. “Oh just, you know, planning Thanksgiving and, ‘Ginger, why don’t you at least pretend you care about Mom and Dad’ bullshit.”

  “You don’t get along with your parents?”

  I sighed and kicked off my shoes, sinking onto my bed. Christopher raised his eyebrows in question, and I patted the bed next to me. “Nah, not really. It’s kind of a choice to avoid them at this point. Because they always just…wanted me to be someone I was never gonna be. When I was younger, I tried. For a while. But nothing that ever felt like me made them proud or happy, and nothing that made them proud or happy ever felt like me. But now…fuck it, you know? I’m an adult and they don’t like me. It’s fine. But it’s not the most fun to go to holidays and family gatherings.”

  “Who do they want you to be?”

  “Eva,” I snorted. “Nah. Uh, they value the things that are recognizable to them as successful, attractive, normal, et cetera. And I’m…not. And some parents would, like, change their notions of what constituted those qualities in an attempt to connect with their kids, but apparently not mine.”

 
Christopher squeezed my knee and left his hand there, a gentle weight.

  I wasn’t sure quite how to explain the effect my mom had on me. The way she felt poisonous, dangerous.

  “My mom always made such a point of making sure I knew that I wasn’t…how she’d like me to be. Sometimes directly, but sometimes just passive-aggressively. Like, I remember when I was nine or ten, I really loved this movie about a family who moved to Alaska because the mom was a wildlife photographer and got a job taking pictures of polar bears. They had two kids, a son and a daughter who had to uproot their lives and start school in Alaska and everything. I watched it over and over. It was probably terrible, I don’t know, but it had all these shots of ice floes and little baby polar bears rolling around.”

  Christopher ran his knuckles over my cheek and smiled. I twined our fingers together.

  “The daughter starts learning all about nature by going on photo shoots with her mom and it turns out she’s super good at photography too—anyway, the point is that I would pretend I was the girl, and the couch was an ice floe and I had to jump from it to the kitchen floor so I didn’t get into the freezing water, and I would take the camera and take all these pictures. Well, pretend to, not with real film.”

  Christopher smiled and lifted our joined hands to his lips, kissing my knuckles. It was an absent gesture. A sweet impulse. But the moment of tenderness was such a stark contrast to thoughts of my mom that it lodged in my throat.

  “One day at dinner, after I’d been pretending I was in the movie all week, my dad said something about his coworker getting transferred, and my mom said, in this super pointed voice, how horrible it was to uproot your family so you could follow your own dreams. How selfish that was. And she was looking right at me. It took me a minute to understand why, because it seemed so random. But she wasn’t talking about my dad’s coworker. She was just making sure I heard that the thing I admired, she thought was garbage.”

  It echoed in my head all wrong. Probably it sounded petty.

  “I’m not explaining it well. There are better examples,” I said, trailing off.

  Christopher was frowning, looking at me intently. “It sounds like your mom had a real problem with you.”