Still Life

by Christa Parrish

  “David,” Stephanie says.

  He reads louder, holding his palm up to stop her. “ ‘Even more, I consider everything to be nothing compared to knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. To know him is the best thing of all. Because of him I have lost everything. But I consider all of it to be garbage so I can get to know Christ. I want to be joined to him. For me, being right with God does not come from the law. It comes because I believe in Christ. It comes from God. It is received by faith. I want to know Christ better. I want to know the power that raised him from the dead. I want to share in his sufferings. I want to become like him by sharing in his death. Then by God’s grace I will rise from the dead. I have not yet received all of those things. I have not yet been made perfect. But I move on to take hold of what Christ Jesus took hold of me for.’ ”

  Take hold? Is that the same thing Pastor Ray meant when he spoke of wrapping our arms around Jesus’s neck? He wants to ask but the bell rings, and students spring up like jack-in-the-boxes, tossing apple cores and milk cartons in enormous gray trash cans before scurrying from the room. Andrew waits for him at the door, flapping at him to come, come, come, but Evan ignores him.

  “Evan,” David says, holding one of those shiny little brochures at him, “you’re welcome to come to church Sunday. Time and place is on the back.”

  Shaking his head, disappointed, Evan says, “Thanks anyway.”

  He starts down the hallway, to biology, when he hears, “Evan, wait.”

  David again, with that colored paper. “I wrote my phone number and email down, in case you want to talk about what we read today. Or anything, really.”

  Evan squints at the tract, slick and dark like the catfish in the lake where his family camps; he was finned by one when he was younger, Bryce daring him to pick the writhing thing up from the dock and not telling him how painful it was to be pricked by the spines on its fins. His brother and another teenaged friend from the campsite adjacent to the Walkers laughed as Evan screamed and dropped the fish, and then started crying. “Don’t be a baby,” Bryce told him, nudging the disgruntled catfish back into the water with his toe. Evan ran back to the camp and his father soaked his hand in hot water, removing the barb protruding from the wound with tweezers. “It was on the beach,” Evan had lied to Will, protecting his brother. “I wanted to throw it back in.”

  With Evan’s hesitation, David laughs a little and tears a page from the spiral notebook in his pile of books and binders and folders, which he balances on one arm while scribbling on the paper. He holds the pen between his lips and folds the paper in an uneven rectangle, hands it to Evan. “Email and phone number,” he says, mumbling around the pen.

  “Thanks.” Evan takes it, stuffs it in his back pocket.

  “Tomorrow at lunch?”

  Evan flicks his top teeth over his bottom lip. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you know where to find us.” David transfers his stack of books beneath his arm and ducks into a classroom not far from where Evan stands, his palm throbbing with the memory of the catfish sting.

  He’s on the bus before Grace, and she sprawls next to him in the seat, legs so long in her skinny jeans, her blond hair dyed a purple-red, the color of grapes and already beginning to wash out at the ends. “How was lunch today?” she asks.

  “Fine,” he says.

  “Evan.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t snap at me.”

  “Then don’t ask questions you already know the answer to. You and Andrew have tech together.”

  “Okay, so yeah, he told me you totally lost it and actually went over and sat with the Fundies. What the heck, Evan?”

  “What do you care where I sit?”

  “Because I’m your friend, and if you hadn’t realized already, your social standing is precarious as it is.”

  Evan snorts and stares out the window.

  “Look, okay.” Grace lowers her voice. “Lots of people turn to religious stuff in the hard times. I know my mom was at mass every single day at seven in the morning after my dad ran off with the step-witch. But you know what? Things got better and she got over it. She married Dennis and we’re back to hitting church only on Christmas Eve, if we’re not too busy last-minute shopping. It’s all good.”

  “You can’t stand Dennis.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Sure, Grace. Whatever.”

  “Evan, look at me,” she says, and when he doesn’t, she yanks his hair, twisting his head around.

  He shoves her hand away. “Knock it off.”

  “No, I will not. You need to listen to me. Just hold on. By next September, no one will care about your mom and Mr. Bailey. Either they’ll just forget, or some other scandal will take its place.”

  “Thanks for the expert advice.”

  “I’m your friend, Evan, which is more than I can say for that bunch of Bible-thumping weirdos. They don’t care about you. They just want a notch on their soul-saving belts.”

  He moves his backpack from his lap and stuffs it between them, crosses his arms, and slumps low in the seat. They’re both silent the remaining ride, and when the school bus slows in front of his house, Evan is sure to whack Grace with his bag as he steps over her.

  The house is empty, and while lately he wants it this way—he doesn’t have to worry about butting up against an argument or an awkward hush—today he wishes for fullness. Tucking a bag of potato chips beneath his arm, he fills a plastic cup—the largest in the cabinet, a souvenir from Six Flags, $10.95 with dollar refills all day, the bendy straw and lid lost, the image of the Boomerang coaster peeling from the dishwasher—with generic lemon-lime soda. In his room, he dumps his books onto his bed and stares at them, devouring the chips and wishing he’d brought the entire bottle of Twist-Up to his room. All the grease and carbonation bloats his stomach but his limbs and head remain disembodied, helium balloons pinned to his torso, ready to escape into the sky if released. He’s angry with Grace. Even though her father left, she and her mother were the offended party and the ones garnering sympathy. If Evan’s father had left his mother, and he’d gone to live with him instead of her—like Seth’s situation in reverse—people would feel bad for him too. But because his family is intact, at least for the moment, he’s seen as aiding and abetting in some unspoken code of infidelity conduct and consequences. Someone should write a handbook; at least then he’d have a firm understanding of the etiquette of this situation.

  He’s never felt so alone.

  Footsteps pounding the stairs, striding with purpose down the hall. Bryce. Evan jumps off his bed and follows, stands in the doorway of his brother’s room as Bryce rummages through his closet, tossing a clean shirt and pair of jeans on his perfectly made bed. His entire room is straight and ordered, without a single rumpled pair of gym shorts on the floor or drawer peeking open. Even his video game consoles are arranged in the cubbies of the television stand, the controllers wrapped in their cords and tucked in orange canvas storage cubes.

  “Bryce?”

  “Hey.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Nick’s, probably.”

  “No practice tonight?”

  He shakes his head. “Never the Thursday before a game.”

  He’s so tall, Evan thinks, watching him fold his outfit, smoothing them before slipping them into his backpack. If it was Evan, he’d cram everything into the front pocket after picking the clothes off the floor, denim legs half-inside out, socks mismatched. Bryce also seems thinner, his face lengthened by the stress and loss of appetite, the bluish smudges beneath his eyes, perpetually there due to his dairy allergy and a refusal to drink the almond milk their mother buys for him, are darker than usual.

  “Scootch,” he says, meeting Evan in the doorway.

  “Can’t you stay?”

  “Sorry, Ev. On your own tonight.”

  “Every night.”

  Bryce looks down on him—everyone looks down on him—takes his fist and bops him twice on the top
of the head with the fleshy side of his oversized hand. Both his hands and feet are larger than his body needs and somewhat comical to see, especially in the summer when he wears swim trunks and nothing else, his thin body beaded with chlorinated water, his hands and feet human flippers.

  He had resented Evan for the longest time, at least Evan thinks he did. There was this sickly baby occasionally showing up in Bryce’s life, home for a week, a month, rarely longer, in between hospital stays. And while it kept his mother away, he had his father and his canned ravioli for dinner and all the television he wanted to watch when the babysitters came over, and nothing was all that disruptive. Then Evan was home more, crying, needing the care of both parents, Bryce dragged along to waiting rooms in various doctor’s offices, trips to the playground pushed off because his brother had speech therapy or another respiratory infection. Sometimes, Evan remembers, Bryce would pinch him when their mother wasn’t looking, push him over, turn the lights off and close him into a dark bedroom. At some point, Evan was well enough for Bryce to become indifferent to him. Bryce was old enough to take his bicycle to friends’ houses and go to Boy Scouts on his own, and he didn’t need to see Evan at all most days, except at the dinner table and when they did things together as family. And that’s how their relationship stayed, not close, not hostile, simply two boys with little in common, born to the same two people and sharing the same space.

  Emotions are not Bryce’s strength, but Evan must give off enough neediness for the older boy to feel it, because Evan sees him soften, and he hangs his pack on the back of his desk chair and asks, “Madden or Reach?”

  “Reach, definitely,” Evan says. “Let’s blow stuff up.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  They go to counseling, and it’s hard. Brutal. They stride into their first session with all the optimism of newlyweds, and leave razed by their own words—about one another, about self—and the observations of the therapist. The next time, Katherine sits in her car waiting for Will to join her from work, devouring packages of Fun-Sized Snickers, crumpling the wrappers in her fist until no more will fit, and then cramming them in the crack between the seats. She leans back in the seat, closes her eyes, and basks in the tingling sugar euphoria, hoping it will last long enough to anesthetize the next fifty-five minutes of pain.

  The struggle helps, in messy ways. Time with Will at home is louder, more vulnerable. The blending of their long, too-separate lives stings like water washing over exposed nerves in their molars, the absolutely necessary thing bringing pain as well as survival. They subsist out in the open now, speaking their thoughts, giving up their hiding spots. They are clamoring children, noisy and messy and exploring what it means to be in relationship with one another again, mopping up all the spilled emotions before falling into bed, exhausted.

  At least they fall into bed together.

  Bryce still isn’t talking to her, other than the obligatory answers to her questions. His silent treatment angers Will, but Katherine tells her husband to let him be angry. He has that right.

  “We should tell them both about what I did,” Will says. “You’re not the only one at fault here. They can hate both of us.”

  “No, don’t,” she says. “They need someone safe they can go to, if they need to talk.”

  “You’re safe.”

  “Not to them. Not right now.” Katherine sighs. “I’ll take one for the team.”

  “You shouldn’t have to. And what if they find out later?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been through this before.” And she goes to him, and burrows into that place where his bicep and side come together, her nose tickled by the hair on his arm. He flattens his lips against the top of her head, blowing onto her scalp. She wants his warmth.

  With Evan, the distance continues as well. Not so much anger but introspection keeps them apart; she doesn’t know exactly what’s going on in his head, but it consumes him much of the time. He’s polite toward her, coming home from school, taking out the garbage, and asking what, if anything, he can do for her before shutting the door to his bedroom. He comes down for dinner, which is more than Bryce does; her older son either eats once everyone else is in bed, or he comes back to the house after eating elsewhere. They’ve not spoken about Evan’s overnight runaway to Trent. He asks about her day, but cares nothing for the answer; it’s habit, muscle memory of the tongue. She can’t read him, though, and that is most concerning to her. This is a kid who is incapable of camouflaging any thought or feeling, or so she thought. He’s become a leaf-litter mantid, a tawny frogmouth, blending his inner workings so perfectly with his surroundings, someone might believe he is empty.

  She knows better.

  She heats a plate of Bagel Bites in the microwave, tries to open the two-liter of Coke so she can bring Evan a glass with the snack. Someone—Bryce—overtightened the cap and she can’t get it off. She searches the dish-towel drawer, beneath them, where she keeps the rubber gripper. Not there. Boys. Checks the storage bag and food wrap and flatware drawer. Nothing. Junk drawer next. She shovels through and finds it. The business card. Julian Goetz. 3741 4th Street. Trent, NY.

  Of course.

  She carries the pizzas upstairs with an empty plastic cup and the entire bottle of soda. Bangs on the bottom of Evan’s bedroom door with her foot. “Brought you a snack,” she says when he opens.

  “Thanks,” he says, taking them, setting them on top of his dresser.

  Katherine waits, and when Evan doesn’t invite her in, she asks, and he shrugs and uses a single finger to push the door; it creeps open, loses momentum, and stops. She steps inside and looks around at laundry strewn over every surface. “Clean much?”

  He shrugs again.

  Three framed photographs hang on his walls. One is a smiling pitcher suspended in the air by an arm without a hand, pouring liquid in a glass. The second is of an elevated train dripping with graffiti, faces peering from the windows. Next to it, a portrait of a soldier with bandaged hands, smoking a cigarette. She doesn’t understand the pitcher photo, but the other two stir her. This Julian Goetz, his images—it makes little sense. She’s seen plenty of train pictures, of soldier pictures. But these, it’s as though Goetz lifted a tiny corner of universe and she peeks inside, but her head blocks the light from above so there are only shadows and half-certainties, and a choice: dance in the vague impressions or go deeper to unearth why she responds to the images in these ways.

  “These are . . . his,” she says.

  “Yeah.” Evan points. “Still Life with Invisible Hands, Number 7. He took that one in college. That one of the train is from a series he did on transportation and poverty. And the soldier, that’s a Pulitzer winner. He’s the only person ever to win five times.”

  “We got you that one.”

  “Last Christmas.”

  “I didn’t pay much attention to it, just sent your Amazon link to your dad. He bought. I wrapped.” She sits on his bed, mattress exposed, fitted sheet twisted in the center with the rest of the blankets. “I didn’t put it together.”

  “You had . . . other things on your mind,” Evan says, flicking tiny, diced pepperoni from the cheese topping.

  She shakes off his bitter words. “I met him. That day. Spoke to him.” He rolls only his eyes toward her, but the rest of him stiffens. “He had his camera out. I told him my son liked photography. I showed him the album you gave me—”

  “Mom, you promised—”

  “—and he said it was good, Evan. You were good.” She holds the business card out for him to take. He does. “He wanted you to get in touch with him.”

  Evan reads the card, presses it between his hands, a bookmark, the place where all things changed. “I went to see his wife. When I left that night . . . after.”

  “And you told her?”

  “Nothing. She wasn’t home.” Now he looks at her with the forthright eyes of a man; her baby gone. “I wanted to apologize.”

  Katherine grimaces. “It’s not your apo
logy to make.”

  Slumping, backbone compressed, shrinking, his body regains the childlike posture his eyes outgrew. He opens his hands partially, cupping them, as if expecting the business card within to have metamorphosed to some sort of winged creature and flutter away. The card stays put. He buries it in the top drawer of his dresser, in the folds of the undershirts Katherine buys for him but he never wears. “I have to ask you something, Mom,” he says, back toward her. “I need you to answer. Please.”

  She’s been waiting for him to ask—both the boys, really—about her affair, preparing responses to every question she imagines possible. No, it’s not about you, or your brother, or your father. This was about me. My brokenness. Yes, I still love all of you. If I could do it again, I’d choose differently. No, I wasn’t thinking about Susanna and Seth. Yes, it was selfish. And on and on and on. She promised herself she’d be truthful. No more lies.

  “Do I need to sit down?”

  “You’re already sitting.”

  “Well, then. Go ahead.”

  “Why do you think some people live and others die?”

  Confused by his unexpected words, Katherine stutters, “W-why?”

  “You said you’d answer.”

  “Do you mean everyone in the world, or Julian Goetz?”

  “Everyone. Him.” Evan turns now. “Me.”

  “Oh, Evan—”

  “Please. Just answer.”

  He’s asked before, and each time she put him off—changed the subject, distracted him, offered a Popsicle—because it isn’t something she wants to think about anymore. When he was born, an infant, a toddler, the question stalked her. There was no algorithm to predict which babies would live to see their first birthdays, which children would have complication-free surgeries and leave the hospital in less than a week. She overheard conversations—everyone walked the corridors with phones pressed to their sweaty ears, explaining the most recent treatment plan to someone on the other end of the line, back home, sleeping in their own bed with their own healthy kids in the next room—a mother or father weeping because minutes earlier they’d been told there was nothing else medicine could do for the small piece of their own soul hooked to a dozen tubes and wires in ICU incubator number six.