Love in the Time of Cynicism

by Jani Berghuis

  I push the curtain wide open and there he is. A grimace is slapped across his tanned face and he wears a sweatshirt even though sticky Texas heat still clings to the September air.

  Before he can speak I shout down, “What the hell are you doing here?” My previous calm and intrigue vanish at the sight of him as I relive everything I felt last night – from the anxious terror of knowing about my mom’s baby to the anger at Rhett thinking he needed to protect me after only just having met me. It comes back in a flood and my pale face flushes beet red. Hopefully he can’t see it in the dark.

  “Cordelia Kane!” He’s all smiles now. Though his face is distorted by how the light spills out my window, I can hear the laughter in his voice; it’s strained, like he’s trying too hard to sound happy. “I wanted to apologize for my terribly protective behavior last night; I should’ve remembered after the jacket incident that you aren’t a fan of chivalry.”

  I try to hide my instant smile, still unsure whether or not he can see and how much I care. “That all?”

  Rhett pauses for a moment, shocked I let him go on even this long. “Actually, I wanted to invite you out for breakfast tomorrow morning. As an extended apology.”

  I almost consider his offer for a moment. Then, realizing the time, I shout back. “Before school? As in six hours from right now?”

  “First period doesn’t start until seven forty-five and breakfast is up the street from school, assuming you go to Lightfoot as well.”

  I think of lying to him – saying I go to the same prissy private school as Amanda – but then the issue of not knowing whether or not we’ll have classes together (as there are only 600 or so kids at Lightfoot, we probably will) and worrying he’ll somehow catch me in the lie, I reply, “Fine. What’s the address?”

  Rhett Punches the air triumphantly like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club and laughs, “47 Eleora!”

  Despite the lovely name, I know for a fact nobody would let me drive a car there, not even Trent. It’s on what mother dearest would call the classless side of town and what Trent would call the wrong side of the tracks; that alone makes me nervous.

  Before I can respond, there’s a knock on my door. Shit. Whoever it is, they’re going to be pissed I’m up so late on a school night. I motion to Rhett to stay there for a second then go into my position. If it’s mom or Michael or even Amanda, the knock is just a warning before marching right on in. So I whip out my contacts, put my glasses on crooked, mess up my hair, turn on the television in the corner, and flop onto my already messy bed.

  Then mom shuffles in, silk embroidered bathrobe tied firmly around her waist. Late at night, it’s still possible to see traces of who she was before Michael: her messy hair, glasses falling down her nose, sleep sewn like the thread of her fancy robe into her barely showing wrinkles. She asks quietly, “Who are you talking to this late at night? I thought I heard voices.”

  “I was just watching TV, mom. Chill.” It’s a bullshit teenager response is there ever was one, but there’s no backing out now. “Some cheesy as hell eighties movie where a boy throws rocks at a girl’s window to get her attention.”

  Mom, as usual, buys it immediately. She’d rather get back to her beauty rest than believe her daughter is doing something requiring parenting. “Language, missy,” she corrects lightly, then kisses my head and returns to her own room.

  The second she’s out the door and safely down the hall, I vault off my bed so fast an Olympian would be impressed and lean as far as I can out my window to hiss, “Get out of here; you woke my mom up.”

  He laughs and hollers even louder, “Only if you swear to come tomorrow, seven sharp!”

  I tilt farther out the window, resting my weight almost solely on my awkwardly angled arms, and ask barely loud enough for either of us to hear, “Why do you care so much?”

  Then he’s running off into the dark and I’m alone in my bedroom with my thoughts.

  So I go to sleep.

  Chapter Four – Breakfast at Tressler’s

  My alarm clock rings forty five minutes early at five o’clock (ugh) in order to give me enough time to contort my body into one of mom’s new clothing picks and try to make myself look presentable to have breakfast with Rhett. It’s an odd balance trying to go through my old clothes and the new ones to find something suitable for someone as strange and outstanding as Rhett. Something that says ‘I’m not quite sure how to feel about you’ and ‘I sort of really like the idea of eating breakfast with you’ at the same time. Today’s hotter than yesterday – peaking at ninety on the third day of ‘fall’ – leading me to settle on a pair of near threadbare, dyed and bleached too many times to count, studded in weird places denim shorts with a painfully contrasted belted white blouse my mother loves. Trying to please everyone has turned me into a mismatched nightmare. Somehow, though, it all fits together once I tug on my ratty old skate shoes (which belonged to Trent before puberty due to my size 10 ½) and put in a dragon shaped ear cuff.

  I shove the textbooks still laying on my desk into my rucksack, sling the bag over my shoulder, and trot downstairs to find Trent’s keys. I’ve decided, since Trent’s unemployed and functionally useless, I’m going to take his truck with or without permission. It’s early enough nobody will know I’m gone and I’ll have it back at the end of the day, probably before he even gets out of bed.

  A conflict arises once I’m in the kitchen searching the key bowl. Trent’s – with the one googly eye stuck on the back to identify the owner – isn’t there. I nearly groan at the thought of going into my brother’s room to search for his keys while he sleeps. Surely his space is a wasteland of unwashed clothes and half-eaten food and generally unpleasant to enter; I haven’t been there since we moved in with Michael and his family a few years back and the idea doesn’t appeal to me.

  Maybe this is a sign from God telling me not to go to Rhett’s place. On the other hand maybe it’s a sign asking my brother not to get so wasted late at night he can’t even drop his keys in the bowl. Signs are tricky to read, especially this early in the morning.

  Nonetheless, I head back up the steps and delicately turn the handle of my brother’s door. Thank god he doesn’t take the time to lock up when hauling himself back into bed at two. It’s pitch black in there, like the rest of the house, but the layout is identical to mine so I manage to make it to his desk, where I feel around a pile of clutter until my fingers land on the familiar shape of the key.

  Keys in hand, I shut the door and dash down the steps, grab my blue bag off the floor and make sure it’s got everything I need inside; I’m in the truck before anyone else wakes up and it isn’t until I’ve got the keys jangling in the ignition that I catch Amanda’s eyes in the front window. She normally wakes up a good half hour later than me; my extra noise must’ve woken her early.

  I curse myself as she stares at me, mischievous glint in her eyes as she thinks of the many ways to ruin my life by telling mom or Michael I was up early for God knows why to see God knows who. Meeting her gaze with force – probably sleep deprivation clouding my judgment as usual – I drive off.

  Though I’ve never been to the address, I’ve passed it about a thousand times. Eleora, ironically, is the street my grandiose public school is on. So, while I drive, my mind autopilots in that direction while bursting with thoughts about Rhett. I have no idea what to say to him about anything and my mind is drawing a blank when I give our breakfast meeting any thought.

  So I shut off. Until I reach number 47, my brain goes on with random chatter. But when the car shudders to a stop, my thoughts shut off completely and I can’t help but take in what’s in front of me.

  The house is an oxymoron. While it’s the smallest house I’ve seen in this part of town, with only two floors compared to my split level resting at the end of the cracked sidewalk, it’s also the friendliest. Multicolored plastic kiddy toys are strewn haphazardly across the patchy lawn, some smashing the delightfully jumbled, carefully tended flower gar
den of roses and daises and pansies and tulips and any flower imaginable. The disarray of color is deafening as the sun begins its ascent. Already golden hues seep over the Texan landscape and set the world on fire, and coupled with the faded yellow of the small house and the drops of dew on the dying grass, this may be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  Something wells up inside me as I stand there staring at this place where Rhett must live. Imagining him playing with little siblings who look like tiny clones of him, laughing and shouting and living a life like I never got to have because of my crazy mother. The feeling is like a desperate, grasping sadness mingled with inexplicable joy at knowing there are still children playing, still older brothers pushing on swings, still parents who care more about their children than themselves.

  It’s stupid, but it’s important.

  Then Rhett’s out the door and jogging toward me. Engulfed in the halo of growing light, his curly dark hair flies everywhere and is childhood crazy as his already sunlight colored eyes ignite with sunshine. He squints and wrinkles his nose to compensate. Rhett pulls the sleeves of his navy blue sweatshirt down as if it’s cold and he isn’t wearing shorts. It occurs to me fleetingly that, despite the usual Texas heat, I haven’t seen him in short sleeves. Curiosity strikes me until I chock it up to not knowing him long enough. Rhett’s probably got great arms (seriously, only people with great arms wear leather jackets) just waiting to be seen at the most convenient time. So I ignore it.

  Before he has the chance to see me properly, I tug at the hem of my shorts and adjust my hair in its ponytail as if some sort of improvement could be made on the look I spent forty five minutes on, significantly longer than I would’ve spent had Rhett not been involved. My hair’s not quite long enough to stay in a ponytail anymore

  “You look phenomenal as usual, Cordelia Kane.”

  I smile, bump into him lightly as we head up the sidewalk. “You don’t have to call me by my full name all the time, you know.”

  “Unlike any possible nickname, it fits exceptionally well with the rest of you,” he answers immediately.

  “And what exactly does that mean?

  Rhett glances over at me as if the answer is completely obvious. “Del is the name of a preppy blonde who has no fun, like your stepsister, Delia is the name of a dark poetic gothic girl constantly resenting her name, but Cordelia. That’s the name of a fun, somewhat spontaneous gorgeous nerd with multicolored hair and a fetish for half-Filipino future models.”

  “Well that’s three things I learned about you.”

  He stops walking right before we reach the door. “Three?”

  “One: you are so aware of your own attractiveness that you honestly think modeling is a logical profession. Two: you’re half Filipino, and I’m probably going to find out the other half when I meet your family. Three: you think I’m gorgeous.”

  He shrugs and grins. “I am merely mortal and unable to resist the pull of the goddess.”

  “Did you seriously call me a goddess?” I tease lightly, “We’ve known each other for three days and you think we’re to that point?”

  “Oh absolutely.” Rhett pauses, looks me over for a second and says, “Don’t freak out when you meet my family.

  Nervousness leaps into my chest. “Why would I freak out? I was completely fine until you said that.”

  “Nothing.” He shakes his head and rests a hand on the door. “They’re just…weird, is all. My little brother, Sawyer, is kind of a nut. The twins are wackjobs. And our sister Tannis turned thirteen last month and is going through a Katy Perry phase. Whenever there’s a teenage girl here, which isn’t often, by the way, she gets weird. If she asks you for makeup tips or bra advice, feel free to ignore her.”

  “That won’t be a problem because those are both areas I know nothing about.”

  He pauses, smirks, stares at me.

  “Jesus, did I really say that? Sometimes things come out of my mouth I don’t mean when I’m nervous. Obviously I know something about bras or I wouldn’t be wearing one. I’m going to stop talking now.”

  Rhett laughs at my pain. “Good idea. It’s just breakfast. Nothing to worry about.”

  And then we walk into the chaos. It’s the opposite of where I expected Rhett to live, not that I’ve seen his room or anything. The walls are various shades of freshly-painted citrus from lemony yellow to grapefruit pink but most are colored with marker or crayon drawings and the carpet is white and splashed with stains. My mother would have a heart attack if she saw the state of this place. But to me, it’s perfect. With the assortment of magazines and CD stacks and clutter and unpacked boxes along with the shouting of children, the place feels alive in a way I haven’t felt before.

  We’re in the bright kitchen and immediately there’re two tiny boys racing around my legs chanting who are you are you Rhett’s girlfriend why is your hair blue are you an alien?

  Rhett pulls them away from me and taps them on the head successively. “This is Evan-” the smaller of the two with a goofy grin and too many freckles for his own good who also happens to look like a smaller version of Rhett “- and Ethan-” who’s got curly blond hair and pale skin like Trent did when he was a kid. “The twins.”

  Silently, I run through the list of races I think this family could belong to. Filipino and…Irish? German? Austro-Scandinavian? I can’t tell but I’m itching to know more about Rhett’s family.

  Footsteps pad over the hardwood over the kitchen and who must be the Tressler parents emerge. They’re not quite what I was expecting. Both are tall and lanky but not as much as Rhett, who must be around six two and is currently watching me intently. His mom is tall – maybe even my height – and has more curves than I do, with big blond curls and light blue eyes and freckles. I figured his mom would be petite and Asian and I’m shocked by how classic Southern belle she is, like a middle-aged Miss America. Her husband’s only a few inches taller, with Rhett’s caramel skin and eyes, and he rocks a stubbly black beard over his round face.

  Mr. Tressler walks toward us and scoops up one of the boys in each arm. They cling to him and laugh as he plants kisses on their heads. Mrs. Tressler comes over to me and engulfs me in a huge hug while talking in a thick Southern accent.

  “You must be Cordelia. Rhett’s told us so much about you.” She cuts a well-meaning glance with terribly suggestive eyebrows to her eldest son. “Not nearly enough, of course.”

  “Susie, don’t smother the poor girl,” Mr. Tressler cuts in and turns to me, still toting both boys. “It’s great to meet you. You can call me Joel and her Susie.”

  “Serious, dad? You want my future girlfriend to call my parents by their first names?” Rhett rolls his eyes sarcastically and removes the latching twins from their father’s arms and sends them off to play.

  He replies, “Most definitely,” precisely the moment I ask, “Future girlfriend?”

  “Don’t roll your eyes at your father, kiddo,” His mom – Susie, I guess – reprimands Rhett.

  He shrugs. “I didn’t roll my eyes, mom, I just needed to take a brief inspection of the ceiling.”

  Suddenly there’s screaming from down the hall, high pitched and traumatized like a six year old girl’s just found her dead parents on the bathroom floor. Morbid, sorry.

  Susie sighs, pulling out several pans from cabinets and setting them on the stove. The countertops ring the room, interrupted by the fridge, oven, and dishwasher with a large dark oak table. Mr. Tressler joins her in cutting up fruits and they talk quietly to one another. “Take care of that for me, dear?”

  Rhett nods without a second thought. “Join me?”

  “How did you know my favorite pass time is handling pre-teen crises?” I joke as he leads me down a hallway and into a pale purple bathroom where his sister stands with a look of pure terror plastered on her face. There’s a wall to wall mirror with a loaded counter under it. Soap, perfume, makeup, hair products, the works.

  She’s a mixture of the two parents more th
an any of the others I’ve seen. She’s got her mom’s voluminous honey blonde hair and freckles but her dad’s brown eyes and tan skin. Her crooked teeth are caged into multi-colored braces and she’s wearing what could only be described as the outfit of an underage stripper. Too-short shorts and a black halter top with an obvious stuffed push up bra. She’s like a tiny Amanda but looks much nicer. She’s squinting with one contact in, makeup smeared and smudged over her skin, and she glares at Rhett and me the moment we walk in.

  Rhett goes protective before she can get a word in. “Oh my god, Tannis, there’s no way you’re wearing that to school on my watch.”

  “I can’t get my other contact in, can you help me please?” Her words are slurred and marred by the dental gear and embarrassed tears fall quickly down her overly-blushed cheeks. I feel for her, really, after living through my longer than necessary awkward pre-teen years. I too wore thick coats of goop and tried to crimp my hair until it burned to distract from my height and lack of curves.

  “Get that crap off your face and come to breakfast.”

  I turn to him as she cries some more and tries to shove her contact back on her eye. She fails and I sigh heavily, “Rhett, I think you should let me handle this one. Woman to woman.”

  He stares guardedly at his little sister, wanting like any good older brother to protect her innocence and all that jazz. But he concedes. “Good luck.”

  I shoo him out of the small room as the scent of bacon wafts in from the kitchen. He shuts the door behind him and I lean against it.

  Tannis sniffles and slumps down on the lavender toilet lid cover. “Who are you?”

  “Your fairy godmother,” I explain with the straightest face possible. “Here to bring you makeup tips and bra advice. Not something I ever thought I’d do, but I see now that the situation demands it.”

  She looks at me dubiously, half squinting, and asks, “You know something about makeup?”