“Margo wasn’t here for Mom,” I say, opening the till to recount bills.
Jarrid straightens the curled-up register tape to find the last transaction.
“What did she buy for three dollars?”
I sigh. “Lemonade.”
“The sparkling sixteen-ounce, no doubt.”
I nod.
“Plus the four-dollar lollipop that was hanging out of her mouth as she left, which means there must be a future-sister discount I don’t know about.”
“She’s calling me Charlotte again.” But my justification put into words sounds flimsy.
“So you’re paying her to be nice.”
“‘Nice’ is a stretch,” I say.
“So is the idea of paying for it.”
I close the till and drop my pathetic elbows along with my pathetic gaze to the counter. Despite my limited visual, I can feel Jarrid’s intense, laser-like stare. His feet, usually planted still, are fidgety. I can hear his shoes squeak on the tile floor. He’s tapping his index finger on the counter like he’s nervous. And right as I’m about to mumble an apology for sucking him into my early-morning drama, he lifts my chin until my eyes meet his.
“You’re worth more than that, Charlotte.”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard these words. In fact, everyone in my extended family has tried at one point or another to drill this very simple notion into my head. “If we could all be as beautiful and smart as you are, Charlotte!” or “Whoever catches you will be one lucky son of a bitch!” (That last one compliments of Uncle Johnny, the Miller-family alcoholic.) But the same words coming from Jarrid suddenly break through and I’m speechless, my gaze swallowed up in his. He’s serious, not just trying to fluff up conversation like the others. No, Jarrid’s message is raw and clear, and for this fleeting second, I’m indoctrinated.
“You’re worth a lot more.” His voice is less shaky.
I push him away before a tear forms. “You’ve read too many of Perfect Pamela’s self-help books.” I fake a sneeze to explain my sudden sniffles. “Anyway, I’m not going to that dinner tomorrow, wouldn’t think of it, so you don’t need to worry about me and my self-worth.”
He looks at the clock behind me and turns to the mess of half-empty boxes in aisle two. “Better get busy,” he says.
“Don’t worry about the boxes.” I am aching to pull on his shirt-sleeves, but I don’t think our dynamic would allow for it. In all the years I’ve known Jarrid, I don’t think we’ve ever touched except to push the other away. The shoulder nudge has always summed up our relationship perfectly. I slide from my stool, plop down cross-legged in aisle two, pulling one of the open boxes to my knees, less in the name of teamwork than in stopping this honest moment from slipping through my fingers.
Jarrid settles down next to me, his shoulder practically touching mine, his breath heavy and hot, flooding into my personal respiratory space. He pulls a box toward him and shifts slightly away. Despite the tearing of box flaps and the crinkly bags, all I hear is silence. I search for the tennis ball lodged under the freezer, the string of lights in the window, the poster about manners. Anything status quo. But I’m too deep into aisle two to see beyond the wall of shelves that surround us. I drop my head into the shipment of mini-pretzel bags and breathe in the dusty cardboard.
“Remember when you punched Marcus Faber in the stomach after he’d punched me in the nose? He went running out of the store crying. Remember that?”
“Yeah, a little,” I say.
“You were feisty back then.” Jarrid nudges me, but this time his shoulder remains glued to mine. I feel his heat instantly.
“I didn’t think things through back then,” I say. But deep down, I wish that kind of courage had stuck around a little longer than it did, that it hadn’t just disappeared one day. I dare to drop my head on his shoulder and my mind begins to spin, tangling all trains of thought.
“Thinking’s overrated,” he whispers. He pulls away just enough to look me in the eye before cupping his hands around my cheeks. Between the brain chaos and the deafening beat of my heart, I am under his spell. I watch his lips pucker and I do the same. His eyes close and I close mine, but before our lips can touch, the door chimes open and a chilling wind whips along the floor. I pull back but not before Jarrid can rub his nose against mine.
“I bet it’s my mom,” he whispers. “She’s got a real knack for bad timing.”
“Jarrid?” Pamela’s breathing heavy and panicked. She wraps around the shelving to find us buried in pretzel boxes.
“Working hard, Charlotte dear?”
I nod and wonder if my cheeks are as flushed as they feel, as flushed and splotchy as Jarrid’s.
Jarrid and I stretch up from the floor and I slip behind the register to my stool.
“Good day, honey?” Pamela smooches Jarrid’s cheek, leaving a waxy, red imprint of her pucker that he tries in vain to wipe away.
I pretend to count the bills in the till while Jarrid slips on his coat. I watch as Pamela wraps her arm around his and pulls him out the door. “Bye, Charlotte dear!” she yells back, but her voice is muffled from the storm. I wave and fake a smile and watch them fade into white. You’re worth more, Charlotte. Jarrid’s words fall somewhere between a call to action and a declaration of like, and I’m left flustered. Pleasantly shocked. A lot more, he’d said.
I’m still staring into the white, the fake smile not completely faded from my lips when I see their forms reappear and sharpen. Before I have time to grab my nail file or press open the till, Pamela is back inside, pulling Jarrid in behind her.
“Charlotte dear, you didn’t tell me your mom was here! I haven’t seen her in ages!” She jerks Jarrid to the counter and calls out for Mom. “Meghan!” she hollers, curling her palms around her lips as if the office is a football field away.
I watch “Meghan” and Pamela skittle in their high heels toward one another, their arms open wide as if they’re long lost sisters and not just a notch above acquaintances. They hug and then pull away, squealing about how good the other looks before walking to the register.
“Can you believe this boy is about to leave us?” Mom says.
“Off to explore the world,” Pamela declares. “Unchartered territories! A clean slate, as they say.”
Inadvertently, and in ten words or less, Pamela has just pushed enough buttons to stop my butterflies—the happy kind—cold.
“I’ll be here a lot, Mom,” Jarrid says.
“You never know,” Mom says. “You might meet some California blondie and never look back.” It’s like Mom and Pamela are in this button-pushing together.
“He’s thinking about studying abroad as a second-semester freshman.” Pamela brags, cracking her jaw and raising her plucked eyebrows so high that they get lost under her heavy bangs.
“France? Spain?” Mom asks.
“Sub-Saharan Africa,” Jarrid answers.
“Ah,” I say like I know where exactly that is.
“I have absolutely no idea where that is!” Mom is practically celebrating her cluelessness.
“Looks like you could use a break, Charlotte dear,” Pamela says. “You’re all glassy-eyed.”
“Just tired,” I say, although it’s not that. I don’t know what’s made my eyes tear, but I can feel one lone drop run from the corner of my eye down the bridge of my nose.
Pamela pats my back. “Be good to yourself, Charlotte,” she whispers, but I’m pretty sure everyone’s heard. “You’re the only one who knows how.” I shimmy my shoulders until she takes her hand away, and swiftly turn for a cup of coffee.
“Let’s go, Mom,” Jarrid says.
I look over the rim of my coffee cup and Jarrid gives me a roll of the eye, a sort of apology for his mom’s borderline-inappropriate public shrinking. I smile back, still hiding behind the coffee cup. It’s the firs
t time our eyes have met since Pamela interrupted our potential kiss, and I become electrified.
As soon as the door slams behind them, I sigh deep, and right as I’m about to slump onto my stool in postbliss fatigue, Mom yanks my arm, spilling hot coffee on my T-shirt.
“Manners, young lady!”
“Pamela should keep her therapy talk to herself, is all,” I say.
Mom frowns and searches the glass freezer doors for her reflection. “Pamela cares about you. Is that such a bad thing?”
“No matter how much you rub, Mom, your hips aren’t going anywhere,” I say.
“I proud of these hips, Charlotte. And I’m proud to be a woman.” She stops admiring herself long enough to catch me watching. “You should be too.”
“Bleh.” It’s like I’ve been dropped into one of those torturous ads for tampons or maxi pads.
Dad’s high-octane Miller pride and the pride I’m supposed to accrue simply by having two X chromosomes don’t make me feel stronger, but pointedly less competent. I’m about as anchored in the world as the snowflakes being whipped dizzy outside, and I want to start over, like Jarrid. No history. No store. Just the great unknown.
You’re worth more, Charlotte. Jarrid’s words have hardened a little since he’s left.
Mom buttons up her coat and wraps her scarf around her neck before whisking by the counter with one last word.
“Don’t forget about tomorrow night,” she whispers.
And before I can say anything, she’s flitted out the door.
I wonder what she’s told Dave about me. I’ll bet he’s been told—and probably in a fake southern twang—that I’m an ungracious handful. Spoiled. Moody. Mean. And I’d also bet that she blames who I’ve become on hormones, as if she’s perfect, as if she could never be the reason for our having grown apart. I furrow my brow and watch Mom slowly disappear into the white right about the time my cell buzzes.
i’ll finish stocking the shelves tomorrow.
and btw, you have to go to that dinner. J
The power of a kiss. Just the idea of our almost-kiss and Jarrid’s words, for the first time ever, persuade.
6. PEG
Tuesday
Mom’s pacing is about to drive me bonkers. If the fireplace in the den weren’t the only warm place in the house, I’d have slipped off to my room hours ago. In the orange-yellow haze of the firelight, Mom turns in circles on the small brick hearth, her chin burrowed into her neck, her hands on her hips. She’s looking for what she calls “inspiration,” as if it’s a lost eraser or pen top. Dad has just pulled out the forty-year-old deck of cards, the one with the kitschy photograph of Mao Zedong, who was chairman of China when Dad was a boy. I’m curled up in the armchair staring into the fireplace, but I’m not bored. I’m thinking. Ideas are unleashed and racing wildly inside my head. Knitting machines are crashing into visions of Maya, fawns, and sugar cookies. It’s mayhem up there in my brain, but it’s a necessary moment, especially when every other minute of my life is spent following rules and taking tests and strapping down dangerous thoughts that can lead to dangerous emotions, such as the kind that made me tear up this morning under Becky Bartholomew’s watch.
I shift my gaze from the blazing fire to the window, where all I see at first is my reflection. If I look past that, though, past my slumped shoulders and dopey-eyed look, I catch a glimpse of the white world beyond these four walls. My gaze shifts to Dad, or to a reflection of him, as he squats carefully to the floor in front of the coffee table to deal three hands.
“I’m not playing,” I blurt with enough proactive rudeness that he shouldn’t bother asking again.
“A quick game of poker,” he says anyway, and I shake my head.
“Me neither, honey,” Mom rakes her fingers along her scalp, pulling her mid-length brown hair away from her face, the way I’ve always wanted her to wear it.
“Could do you both some good,” Dad says. “Get your mind off the book, Peggy.”
“All right,” Mom gives in as she always does. “One game.”
I push back deeper into my armchair and stare out the window as Mom lays down her notebook and pen. I watch the black silhouette of trees heavy with snow sway slow and deep in the wind.
“We’re going to lose some trees,” I say.
“Especially in the wetlands,” Dad says. “Your beloved deer den will probably be destroyed.” He pops a couple of cashews that Mom has just brought to the table and looks at his poker hand.
“You make their habitat sound about as important as a stray gray hair,” I say.
“They carry Lyme disease, Peg,” he says. “Animals aren’t as clean as humans.” He grabs a second handful of nuts and shoves them into his mouth as if he’s starving. “And just so you know,” Dad says, “finding gray hair is a big deal.”
“The human bite is the dirtiest,” Mom interjects in my defense.
Dad drops his chin and raises his gaze to focus on me above the frames of his reading glasses. “Don’t be getting too close to those animals, Peg. End of story.”
But I’m no longer listening. Not because I don’t agree with Dad, which would be reason enough to stop listening, but because I think I see something moving in the white. I lean over the armrest and press my forehead on the icy windowpane, cupping my hands alongside my temples. Despite the darkness and flurries, I think I can make out the diamond on the deer’s chest as she trudges through the knee-high snow. Her needle-like legs must be frozen, her snout too. Every couple of steps, she digs her nose into the cold white only to pull it out again. On her back is a thin layer of snow, but she doesn’t shake it off. I try to imagine myself in her place and a chill runs through my shoulders, both from the cold and her childlessness. How do animals mourn loss?
“Get closer to the fire, Peg,” Mom says. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m not cold.” I keep my forehead stuck to the windowpane and watch the doe continue through the thin line of trees separating our yard from the next. I wonder if the fawn is buried somewhere under the snow just inches from where its mother is looking. Waiting patiently. “When do survival instincts kick in?”
“Huh?” Dad whips his head toward me with a sneer. So much for his poker face. Mom looks over at me with a knowing smile.
“Survival instincts in say, fawns. When do—”
“They’re instincts, Peg. They’re part of you from the beginning, from the get-go,” Dad says. “I fold.” He slaps his cards onto the table and says something about poker being a stupid game.
“I wouldn’t know how to survive in an avalanche,” I say. “Despite survival instincts.”
“Animals are different,” Dad says.
“You’ve never had a pet in your life.” Mom shuffles the deck, but right as she is about to deal the cards, she dives toward her paper and pen and rushes to the counter. The cards flutter to the table, but no matter; she’s got an idea. I watch her shuffle madly through papers on the counter and lunge once more, this time toward her crooked tower of books.
“Told you,” Dad says. “All you needed was a . . . WATCH OUT FOR THE CORD, PEGGY!” Dad yells out the way you do from a nightmare. It’s the kind of yell that would startle anyone from a deep sleep; and if you’re already awake, it’s the kind that could give you a heart attack. I swallow hard in an effort to wash my heart down to its rightful spot, which is not in my throat. I hear Mom’s pen fall to the floor. If Mom’s inspired idea hasn’t fled for cover, well, then it’s one damned good idea. The only thing not affected by Dad’s scream is the popping fire.
“Jesus, Dad!”
“This flimsy lamp cord, David?” Her tone exudes a nurse-like patience as she scours the ground for the cord.
“Never mind,” Dad says under his breath.
“Uh-huh,” Mom returns to her book in front of the fire as if nothing has happened. Her nonreaction tells
me that her idea was indeed a damned good one; and that this isn’t the first time Dad’s blurted out in a panic about something unnoteworthy. A hint of worry causes a small fissure in the wall between me and Dad, a wall made mostly of sometimes-intentional but mostly unintentional misunderstanding. I counter this growing fracture of concern about Dad with a silly image of him at one of his bigwig university lectures. “So as I was saying, class,” Dad would say, “Baudelaire wrote Les Fleurs du mal in . . . YOUNG MAN IN THE FIRST ROW! YOUR SHOELACE IS UNTIED!” A smile ekes across my lips but fades fast; because no matter how my concern for Dad can be diffused by our thick wall of disconnection and by a little humor, love is love.
I sit on the edge of the firelight and watch him in the middle of it as if he’s on display. People say that after you lose someone, everything inside of you becomes heightened. The kind that turns any mediocre happening, like eating cornflakes at breakfast, into a miracle of life. The crunch of the flakes in your jaw, the taste of corn, I don’t know. With carpe diem and a touch of naïveté or blind faith as your daily armor, stepping in a wad of gum in the school parking lot could be a transformative life lesson. For Dad, however, loss translated into a deep-seated fear that preys on his every fiber. I wonder if he has noticed his own transformation. How do you fight something that works from the inside out without losing a part of yourself in the process? Days after the accident, Dad took all our bikes to the dump, claiming that the danger of biking largely outweighed any of the fun. Six years later, the danger of anything mildly risky not just outweighs any potential fun but preeminently annihilates it. I watch Dad in the fire’s glow as he bites his nails.
If I weren’t so lazy, I’d tell him that fear can’t keep us any safer. As the fire wanes, its circle of light diminishing, I’m left in a deeper, safer darkness that prods me into imagining a scenario. I slump into the folds of the armchair, content to let my silent screenplay unfold.
“The bad stuff usually happens to everyone else,” I would say to Dad. “But sometimes it doesn’t.”
Hold-Up Page 9
