Why Can't I Be You (9781101602843)

by Larkin, Allie

  “Well,” Anita said, “I’m here if you have questions.”

  After we’d gone through the studio and brainstormed potential issues and ways to maneuver with Matisse around the easels and supplies, we were done with our tour of Anita’s day. I left the room while they did the seizure drill in Anita’s office. Anita seemed embarrassed to have to pretend to have a seizure, so I asked where the bathroom was and left them to work.

  I walked down the hall and went back to the studio. I stared at the easels and the huge rolls of canvas. I studied the paint stains on the floorboards. I sat on a stool in the corner and closed my eyes and thought about the things I would paint, imagining the feel of paint on brush, brush on canvas, the way a tightly stretched canvas gives just a little. Whenever I’d pictured myself married to Deagan, something about it always felt fuzzy. I couldn’t picture myself at Levi & Plato, getting promoted, having my own office. But I could picture myself in this studio, painting, so clearly. I felt like it was where I was supposed to be.

  A student came in with a jar full of brushes and a big black portfolio. She had long brown hair twisted into a braid, and was wearing a shapeless green dress. She had earbuds in and hummed to herself.

  “Oh shit!” she said, when she saw me. “Sorry! Sorry! You startled me. I was in my own little world.”

  “Me too,” I said, and got up.

  “Don’t feel like you have to leave. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  “No,” I said, “I was on my way out.”

  Fish and Anita were done with the drill when I got back to the office. They were both praising Matisse. “Good boy!” Anita said, beaming.

  Fish had a sad, longing look on his face.

  “We’re going to give you a moment,” Anita said to Fish, and hooked her arm into mine. When we got out into the hallway, she said, “Here’s my card. Call me. And I mean it. I think your combination of art and business talents could bring a lot to the program.”

  When Fish and Matisse emerged from the studio, Fish’s eyes were red. “Here you go,” he said, handing the leash over to Anita.

  Anita smiled. “You . . . ,” she said, kissing Fish on the cheek and giving him a big hug. “You just gave me my life back.” When she pulled away, she was crying too, which of course made me teary.

  I held Fish’s hand on the walk back to the parking lot. As soon as he was safely inside the truck, he leaned over and buried his head in my shoulder. “I guess I lied,” he said. “It doesn’t get that much easier. But it’s the best thing I can do, you know?”

  “I’m so proud of you,” I said.

  He sniffed really hard and then wiped his face with his sleeve. He took a deep breath and started the truck. “You don’t get to make fun of me for this, Jess.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

  “It’s not exactly the most masculine thing ever, to go around crying about a dog.”

  “What I’m amazed by,” I said, “is that you’re willing to put yourself through this over and over again so you can help people. It’s kind of hot.” I smiled at him.

  “You know,” he said, smiling, “I think Myra is still at work.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I can do it in Grammie’s bed.”

  “Who needs a bed?” he said.

  We didn’t even make it upstairs. Fish kissed me the second we walked into the living room. The curtains were open, so we stumbled into the kitchen, shedding clothes as we went. Fish picked me up and sat me on Myra’s kitchen counter.

  “This is so rude of us!” I said, jumping down and pulling him to the floor with me.

  “When did you get polite?” Fish asked, laughing.

  “People prepare food up there!”

  Fish’s whole body shook against mine as he laughed.

  I unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his belt loops. The belt smacked against the floor with a loud crack. I hadn’t meant for it to.

  “Mmm,” Fish said, kissing my neck. “You’re still a little bit wild.”

  “Very,” I said, biting at his bottom lip. It made sense to go with it.

  “You,” Fish said, when we were lying breathless in a pile of clothes on the kitchen floor, “are—”

  My phone rang. I’d forgotten I’d turned it back on. Thankfully, it was just Heather. I picked up.

  “Is Fish with you?” she asked, instead of saying hi.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’re at Myra’s.”

  “How did the dog drop-off go?”

  “Good,” I said. “Hard.”

  Fish laughed.

  “I mean,” I stammered, “I don’t know how he does that over and over again.”

  Fish laughed again. He got up and ran to the bathroom.

  “He’s amazing, isn’t he?” Heather said.

  “Yeah,” I said, sighing.

  “Okay,” Heather said. “Tell him we’ll be over in five to do the thing. See you, sweetie!”

  “What’s the thing?” I asked, but she’d already hung up. “What’s the thing?” I asked Fish when he came back.

  “Was that Heather?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit,” he said, “we better get dressed. She’s always earlier than she says she’ll be.”

  “She said five minutes.”

  And then the front door opened. My shirt was crazy wrinkled. Fish handed me his sweater to cover it up.

  “Hey, guys,” Heather said.

  “Are you decent?” Robbie called.

  “Will you settle for immoral and horribly decadent?” Fish said, walking out of the kitchen to give me an extra second to button up.

  I joined them in the living room. Heather had a big grocery bag in one hand and a random assortment of wooden and plastic mixing spoons in the other, like a bouquet.

  “Ready to eat your feelings?” Heather handed each of us a carton of ice cream and a spoon. There were three cartons left over. We sat on the couch, put our feet on the coffee table, and opened the cartons.

  “To Fish!” Heather said, and put her spoon out. Robbie and Fish clacked spoons with her, and I followed suit.

  “Which one did you get, Jess?” Robbie asked.

  I looked at the container. “Chocolate Fudge Brownie Fro Yo.”

  “Shoot,” Heather said, taking the container away from me. “I didn’t mean to get Fro Yo.”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “No,” Fish said, gravely. “It’s not.”

  “It’s too close to being healthy,” Robbie said, shaking his head. “You can’t eat your feelings with health food.”

  Heather reached into the bag and pulled out a carton of Cookie Dough ice cream. She double-checked the label before handing it to me. “Much better.”

  I opened the carton and dug in with my wooden spoon. Trying to get the ice cream into my mouth with the long handle was a challenge. Robbie, Heather, and Fish were pros. I didn’t comment much, because I wasn’t sure how old of a tradition it was. Talking didn’t seem to be a part of eating our feelings anyway.

  I was a quarter into my ice cream when Heather yelled, “Switch!” and everyone swapped cartons.

  “Ew!” Robbie said, after taking a scoop of his new carton. “This one has fruit in it!”

  “It’s Cherry Garcia,” Fish said.

  “It’s fruit,” Robbie said, and swapped cartons with Fish.

  “Hey,” Fish said.

  “Deal,” Robbie said.

  “I believe we’re here for me,” Fish said. “I don’t think you get to steal my ice cream.”

  Robbie responded by opening his mouth and waving his tongue around, to show Fish the ice cream he’d just shoveled in.

  “Eat your fruit, Fish,” Robbie said. “It’s good for
you. Fiber. Helps you live long and prosper, man.”

  Fish leaned his head on Robbie’s shoulder. “The longer I live, the longer you have to put up with me, dude.”

  “Good,” Robbie said, and shoveled another heaping mixing spoon of ice cream into his face.

  We heard Myra’s car pull into the driveway. My heart skipped, the way it always did when I heard my mom’s car as a kid. The sound of tires on gravel always made me feel like I was about to get in trouble.

  “Oh my God,” Myra said, as she walked in the door, “the flop sweat!” She lifted her arms and waved at her armpits. “I was so nervous taking about the details on the Blackberry line today! I’m glad we were ironing things out over the phone, because I could not control the sweating!”

  She stopped and looked at us. “You’re eating your feelings without me?”

  “It’s what you get for working late,” Fish said, waving his spoon at her, dripping ice cream on Robbie’s jeans.

  “We’re meeting Karen at Fish’s in an hour,” Heather said. “Fire pit. I got salmon and potatoes for hobo dinners. Robbie is going on a beer run if he can ever tear himself away from his Chunky Monkey.”

  “I believe that’s my Chunky Monkey,” Fish said.

  “That’s what that was?” Robbie said, moving away from Fish’s leg. “I thought it was just a pen in your pocket.”

  “Robert Marcus Henry!” Heather yelled, but she was smiling.

  “Oh my God!” Myra said, laughing. “You guys will never grow up, will you?”

  “Not if I can help it.” Robbie smiled.

  “Okay, well, I’m going to go take a shower.” Myra climbed the stairs.

  “Cool,” Robbie said. “We’ll see you over at Fish’s.”

  “Save me some Cookie Dough,” Myra called from the top of the stairs.

  “Not likely,” Heather shouted back.

  Robbie and Heather left to pick up the food and grab some beer, and Fish went home to get the fire started. I said I’d stay and wait for Myra, which bought me some time to go back to the basement and snoop through the photos. One thing I’d already learned about Myra was that she took really long showers, and then she took forever to get ready. I didn’t even hear the water wheeze through the pipes when she turned the shower on until after everyone had eaten their fill of ice cream and was gone.

  I walked down the stairs carefully, trying not to make too much noise, just in case Myra had crazy sonic hearing. I pulled the box off the shelf and opened it, skipping the pictures of Robbie, Heather, Karen, Myra, and Fish and going straight to the photos of Jessie. The anagram Jessies.

  I let the rubber band hang on my wrist while I flipped through the pictures again, looking for clues. Jasmine Gores. I looked at Jessie’s anagram alter ego in her floppy hat and lace shawl and wondered if I could pretend to be her too. How far had Jessie taken these characters? Was it just for the photographs? Did she ever go out into the world as Jane Rose Migs or Anise Jogrems? And then it occurred to me that maybe Jessie was pretending to be one of them now. Maybe that’s how I would find her. It was one last straw to grasp at. Maybe Jasmine Gores or Miss Jean Ogre would show up and answer all my questions. I sat on the floor with the stack of pictures next to me and typed each name into the browser on my phone. My hands shook. If I knew where the real Jessie Morgan was, what I was doing would seem so much worse. But maybe if I found recent pictures of her online, what she’d done would somehow be obvious. Maybe there would be another clue. Something else I could learn to head off Karen’s anger.

  I went through every single one of the names on the pictures, and unless Jessie Morgan had found a way to morph herself into a six-foot-tall drag queen, I was shit out of luck. I turned off my phone.

  The pipes shuddered when Myra finished her shower. I ran up the stairs before she came out of the bathroom and busied myself with cleaning up the sticky ice cream cartons in the living room.

  “So,” Myra said, running down the stairs, “since we’re a little late, I thought we could drive over. If we drink too much, we can always stumble home and get the car tomorrow.”

  Her hair was still damp from her shower, but she had done her signature black winged eyeliner and was perfectly styled to go to a campfire. Dark blue jeans cuffed to midcalf, unlaced work boots with thick wool socks, and an apple-green sweater with big wooden buttons that looked like it had probably belonged to Grammie.

  I was still wearing Fish’s sweater, the jeans I’d bought at Myra’s shop, and my loafers, which looked ridiculously fancy in this context. There was no way I was going to get my feet back into Jessie’s hiking boots or my heels. I felt dowdy in comparison to Myra, but I liked the way Fish’s sweater smelled like him and the way the wool scratched my chin.

  “What’s with the dirty rubber band?” Myra asked. “Trend I haven’t heard about yet? Should I be stocking them?”

  “Oh,” I stammered, taking it off my wrist and dumping it in one of the empty ice cream cartons I was throwing away. “I don’t even know where it came from. I’m a rubber band klepto.” I laughed.

  “Rubber band klepto?” Myra looked amused.

  I told myself that she had no reason to think the rubber band came from the photos downstairs.

  “Yeah, you know how some people always swipe pens?” I said. I had no idea where the words spilling out of my mouth were coming from. “I’m like that with rubber bands. If I’m near one, it ends up on my wrist.”

  “Weirdo,” Myra said. She helped me clear the rest of the ice cream mess. “Although, I met this woman who made these studded rubber bracelets. They were recycled bicycle tires. But maybe layers of rubber bands would work too.” She nodded like she was trying to move the thought into a place in her head where she’d be able to find it later.

  “So what’s the deal with you and Karen?” Myra asked when we got in her car to go to Fish’s house.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she never really seemed surprised that you left. She was . . .” Myra rested her right hand on the back of my seat while she backed out of the driveway, and held her thought until we were on the road “ . . . smug about it. I always thought she knew something she wasn’t telling us, or maybe she even knew where you were. She’d never say that she did or didn’t. And she didn’t seem happy to see you today.”

  “You noticed that too?” I said. “Heather didn’t seem to notice. I thought I was losing it.”

  “Well, of course Heather didn’t notice,” Myra said, laughing. “She’s Heather. She wants us all to love each other so much that she puts on blinders to everything else.”

  I played with a loose thread on Fish’s sweater cuff.

  Myra aimed the heat vents to blow hot air toward her and shook her hair out with her fingers to get it to dry faster. “So what does Karen have stuck up her butt?”

  “To be completely honest,” I said, looking at her, “I have no idea.”

  When we got to Fish’s, they’d already started the bonfire. Fish’s soon-to-be house was lit up with caged lightbulbs hanging from extension cords.

  Robbie balanced on a log, drinking a beer and stoking the fire with a pitchfork. When we got out of the car, he waved the pitchfork in the air and howled at us.

  Fish and Karen were sitting on another log near the fire. Karen had her hand on his shoulder and was showing him pictures on her phone. The screen lit up their faces. Fish was smiling, and the way Karen kept tossing her hair made me nervous.

  “Hey, guys,” Myra said.

  “Hey,” I said too.

  Myra walked up to the house frame, so I did too. My instinct to avoid Karen outweighed my desire to see Fish.

  Heather was in the future kitchen, using a piece of plywood laid across two saw horses as a table.

  “Hey, girls!” she said, smiling. “Come help!”

>   She had big hunks of salmon, sliced potatoes and onions, pats of butter, and bunches of herbs laid out on plates in front of her.

  “We’re doing hobos. I have one more onion to chop, so if you want to set them up, that would be awesome.”

  “Sure,” I said, even though I had no idea what a hobo was in this context.

  “I don’t want to touch the fish,” Myra said.

  “What, do I have cooties?” Fish said, walking up behind her, wiping his hands on her back. “Now you do too.” Myra laughed and pretended to wipe Fish’s cooties off her back in mock disgust.

  Fish leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. When I turned around to hug him, I could see Karen, sitting by herself in the firelight, watching us.

  “I’ll touch the fish,” I said to Myra, and I felt a thrill when I watched Fish blush.

  “Okay,” Myra said. “I’ll do the rest.”

  Myra grabbed a box of aluminum foil from Heather’s tote bag and started ripping off big sheets and stacking them at the end of the table.

  I hooked my finger into Fish’s hand. “How’re you doing?” I asked him.

  “Better,” he said, smiling.

  Myra worked fast, layering the onions, potatoes, and other ingredients.

  “Okay, your turn,” she said, and handed me the first packet.

  I let go of Fish’s hand and grabbed a slab of slimy salmon. I dropped it in the center of the foil, on top of all the other stuff. Then Fish folded the foil into a neat little packet while I held my slimy hand over the salmon plate and waited for Myra to finish the next one. Heather wore a pair of Fish’s safety glasses to keep her from crying while she sliced the rest of the onions. I looked at all of them, at the fire, at the house frame lit up against the night, and felt a longing that hit me so sharply it made my eyes sting.

  “I love that we’re all together,” Myra said, bumping shoulders with me. “The whole family.”

  I clenched my teeth to keep from crying. As much as I wanted it to be, I knew none of it was mine. Once the week was over, I’d never see them again. I didn’t have a family.