We Contain Multitudes

by Sarah Henstra

  Yours truly,

  Jo

  Tuesday, December 1

  Dear Little Jo,

  Look. If you’re going to give a play-by-play of the whole thing in the park you can’t just stop at the exact moment where I come off looking like an asshole. Worse than an asshole—a psycho actually. My mouth saying one thing and my hands doing the exact opposite.

  I mean I’m not saying you’re wrong about that particular moment. I was in some kind of fog. Panicking, if you want me to be completely honest. That expression on my face, that lockdown look you hate so much? If you ever see it again don’t take it so personally, Jo. It’s just panic.

  I guess I’d better finish the scene for you. So you’re humiliated, as you said. Tears are starting up in your eyes. I’m hanging on to you so you can’t wriggle away. And you are wriggling, by the way, and you’re doing it right in my lap and it’s not exactly making my head any clearer.

  Wait, is what I say to you. It sounds more like a growl than a word. Wait. Will you please give me one second to think?

  You sort of freeze. You sit there staring at the ground past my elbow, pawing at your cheeks to wipe away the tears. It’s not perfect. I am aware it’s not perfect and that I’m being a total asshole to hold you there after flat-out rejecting you. But I also know that if I let go of you right at that moment it will be too late. You’ll never get near me again.

  If I let it happen, I don’t know what’ll happen, I say.

  Your eyes move to mine and then away. Right, you say. I could lose control and overpower you. You’re trying for a joke but it sounds more like misery.

  No, I say. I mean me.

  Your eyes meet mine, and it’s surprise in them now. You almost smile.

  It makes me so jealous, Jo, that you’re not as terrified of this as I am. That you’re settled with it somehow. Not necessarily comfortable but settled. How about if I just kiss you, is what you’d suggested. Just like that.

  I shake my fingers loose from your belt loops. Focus on trying not to react to the jostling this causes. The truth is I’m breathing pretty hard by now. My quads have started trembling. I flatten my thighs to the ground, trying to hide the trembling from you.

  We could set a timer, you say.

  What? I ask.

  A timer. For, say, thirty seconds. Or twenty. Just for a limit, you know. For safety.

  You give my shoulder a little pat. You say, Either way I’m getting off your lap, okay?

  I am pretty sure you’re only kidding about the timer. I mean it’s an insane idea. But at least you’re not bolting away from me across the park or anything, so I just sit there while you arrange yourself on the grass beside me. On your knees facing me.

  You’re not kidding though. We’ll have to find the right ring tone, you say. Crickets, or a dog bark, or something like that. Lyle’s phone has a banjo riff, but if you really, really hate this kiss, Kurl, it would operate like some kind of aversion therapy and you’ll end up hating bluegrass too. And I won’t be responsible for a tragedy like that.

  You nudge my bicep. C’mon, give me your phone.

  I don’t have a phone, I say.

  You frown. You look around in the grass like you might find someone’s discarded phone conveniently lying nearby. Well, then, you say, maybe we can use a safe word. Have you heard of safe words? We could agree on a certain word, so that if either of us says it the other person knows everything has to stop.

  By this point I’m barely listening. I can barely even hear you, the way my heartbeat is banging in my ears. I feel like every muscle in my body is flooded with waiting. Like I’m drowning in waiting.

  How about mandolin, you say. Or last time round, like you say in a bluegrass jam. Or is that too complica—

  You look at my face and cut yourself off mid-word. Then you lean in and lay your hand against my cheek and kiss me.

  Well, you were there too, Jo. You know how it went. You came in lightly at first, like you were afraid I might bite you. Basically just brushing your lips over mine. You broke contact but stayed right there, so that the not-touching was part of the kiss too. Your eyes were open. You let out a soft shallow breath.

  That’s what did it I think. The feel of your breath plus all that caution. When your lips touched mine again I opened my mouth and kissed you back for real. Until your eyes closed and you swayed and I steadied your shoulders with my hands.

  Oh my goodness, you said, but still not pulling away. Just saying it into my mouth. Your breath not soft anymore but ragged. You’re good at this, Kurl.

  I recognized that voice of yours. That turned-on, pitched-up voice from that time in my car. You said in your letter that your turned-on voice was whiny, but there was another word I liked better. Undone. That undone voice of yours.

  By the way. No, I will not use the word stirring. I don’t care who used it in the nineteenth century or how baby monkeys in experiments behave. I mean it doesn’t even make sense. We’re just going to have to think of other ways to describe it.

  I wasn’t completely crazy to worry what would happen though, was I? I mean it was a kiss but already it was more than that. My fingers in your hair but already sliding under your shirt, across your back. My tongue already in your mouth. Pressing deeper. My arms already around you tipping you off balance and turning you over onto the grass.

  A word kept flashing in my head. One word, over and over, like a flashing neon sign. Lucky. I don’t know how to describe it, Jo. Lucky lucky lucky. My whole body wanted to crawl inside your whole body, just to share all this luckiness with you.

  At that exact moment a dog barked right next to our heads. We sat up so fast that your forehead smashed into my mouth.

  It was a black lab puppy, barking like a maniac. Charging at us and leaping back, trying to get us to play.

  Walter! Walter, come! this woman yelled, and ran up and grabbed the dog. She hooked the leash onto his collar. Sorry, she said. I’m so sorry about that.

  They were gone before we could say anything.

  Are you okay? you asked.

  I checked my lip where your head had hit. No blood, I said.

  No, I mean in general, you said.

  I’m good, I said. I feel kind of amazing actually.

  You laughed. Did you hear that? you said. Can you believe it? That dog’s name was Walt!

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Wednesday, December 2

  Dear Little Jo,

  I am writing this sitting outside Mr. Abdi’s office. Waiting on my so-called Decision on Disciplinary Action, otherwise known as sentencing. I’ve been here all afternoon waiting for the librarian to come by and give her report.

  I’d really hoped not to see you at all this year, Adam, Mr. Abdi said, before putting me out here to wait. His whole face drooping with disappointment. I’ve been hearing such good things from Ms. Khang about your engagement with literature, your goals for the future. And now this.

  Jo, you were the one who said we didn’t need to talk it to death. Those were your exact words, remember? There’s no need to talk it to death.

  Monday when we were still in the park I said it would take me a while to figure out what kissing you meant and what to do about it, and you said, It doesn’t have to mean anything. You don’t need to do anything. Let’s just let it be what it was.

  Let it be. As if you’ve ever, in your whole life, let anything be. I mean I should have known you’d turn around and bring it up again within forty-eight hours. At school too yet.

  We were in the library at lunch so I could show you the college information that Khang gave me. You were acting sort of nervous. I mean I could tell you weren’t paying attention to what I was saying et cetera.

  So I ask you what’s wrong and you say, I can’t actually not talk about it.

  About what? I say. Walking right into it.

  That kiss.

  No, I say. We’re not talking about that.

  But you ignore me. You lean forward, all
secretive. Come on, Kurl, you say. You can’t just sit there and pretend it wasn’t incredible. Extraordinary.

  And then you put your hand over my hand. Right there, on top of all my notebooks on the table in the middle of the Lincoln High library. I mean it felt like stripping off all my clothes in public.

  I get out of my chair and start shoving all my papers into my backpack. I say, No way. I’m not doing this.

  You look up at me with this look. This sort of sympathetic look. Regretful. Like you knew I’d react like that, and had planned not to say anything, and then couldn’t help yourself and said it anyway.

  Like I’m that predictable, and you feel sorry for me.

  So I turn and walk out.

  I’m heading to my locker and I’m thinking how actually dangerous and psychotic you are, and wondering what I am doing spending any time at all with a person who can’t even keep a promise for forty-eight hours. Maybe I’m sort of panicking. But I’m plain old angry too.

  So it takes me a minute or two. I’m halfway across the school when I recall the fact that those kids had been in the library when I left. Some of those little jerkoffs you call the butcherboys. The blond girl and the stupid-looking boy, Dowell. They’d come in just as I was leaving, and I’d shoved right past them without registering it. But now it hits me. Why would they go to the library on their lunch hour except to find you?

  By the time I walk back through the book stacks to our table, they’ve already got half your belongings scattered around on the carpet. The girl is scrawling all over your binder with a Sharpie. Hearts, I love cocks—the usual stuff. Dowell is waving something around, and you’re trying to grab it away from him.

  He shoves you away and starts reading: Dear Little Jo, I guess I can tell you about heroes. Sacrifice et cetera. My dad died falling off a roof when I was ten.

  It’s one of my letters he’s reading. The one about Sylvan going to work for Uncle Vik and Mark joining the army. It’s an old one, so it takes me a second to recognize it. And then it takes me a second to realize that you’ve been carrying it around. I mean I am so shocked that I just stand there for a few seconds listening.

  You’re hopping around going, Come on, give it back. That’s my private correspondence.

  Dowell stops. Turns the page over. Is this from your boyfriend? he says. Is this a love letter?

  You know what you remind me of, Jo? I mean now that I’m stuck here outside the VP’s office with all this time to think about it. You’re like these Christmas ornaments that my babcia brought over from Poland and passed on to my mom. I hauled them all up from the basement last night because my mom wants to clean them before the holidays. They’re these hollow red and gold shapes. Spheres and bells and diamonds, all made of the thinnest glass you’ve ever seen. They weigh nothing in your hand. You go into a trance staring at them on the tree, because the lights shine right through them and also bounce off the glitter-coated parts. They make amazing patterns on the walls.

  Jo, you are exactly like one of those ornaments. Sparkly and delicate and fascinating. Go ahead and take that as a compliment if you want.

  But here’s the thing. You should see what happens when one of these ornaments falls off its hook. Once when we were kids Mark had an umbrella in the living room for some reason. He was swinging it around and its tip just barely brushed the tree, but one of the bells came loose. It made this tiny high-pitched pop against the hardwood. It just exploded. The shards were so small and scattered so far that we couldn’t even properly sweep them up. We were trying to hide it, so Mark got a dust cloth and wiped the whole floor. But still for weeks after Christmas, if you walked around in there on bare feet, you’d end up with microscopic cuts in your soles.

  Here is what I need you to do, Jo. I need you to figure out how to be less like a Christmas ornament some of the time. I’m not saying all the time. But some of the time. And in some places like school. Because there’s no way I can keep catching you when you fall. And you are falling all the time, Jo. The goddamn tree is shaking all over the place.

  To top it all off I promised Uncle Vik I’d show up this afternoon to help on a roof. Add that to a suspension or whatever Mr. Abdi decides to do with me. I’m just handing him an excuse.

  That’s not even what makes me so angry. None of that is. What makes me angry is that my life is so predictable. Everything that happened today at school, everything that’ll happen when I go home. It’s so routine at this point that it makes me sick. All your talk about Life After High School is bullshit, Jo. The truth is that nothing, none of it, is ever going to change.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Friday, December 4

  Dear Kurl,

  I am positively reeling from the layers of irony in your letter. There are so many convoluted twists and turns of irony here that I nearly biked straight into the side of a bus on my way home today. That’s how preoccupied I was, trying to sort it all out.

  I love the part where you blame me firstly for touching your hand, at school too yet—as though it was a lap dance in the middle of the cafeteria!—and secondly for getting you into trouble with Ms. McGuire and therefore with the vice principal. How conveniently you overlook the fact that I was the one sitting there quietly in my chair while you were the one throttling Christopher Dowell right in front of the librarian.

  He had your letter in his hands, yes. I’ll concede your point about the carelessness of carrying any of your letters on my person, given my attractiveness to the butcherboys. But your reaction to the situation was out of all proportion. You were like the Terminator. You grabbed Dowell by the throat and slammed him so hard into the shelves that four or five books tumbled out the other side. No wonder Ms. McGuire showed up within mere seconds. The sound of falling books must be like a dog whistle to a librarian’s ears.

  You snatched your letter from his hand and flung it in my general direction.

  “Whoa. Chill, man,” Maya said. She had leaped up from where she’d been doodling on my notebooks and was backing away.

  Dowell was choking, but you weren’t letting him go. “Stay the hell away from him,” you said.

  “Kurlansky, we’re sorry, man. We didn’t mean anything by it,” Maya said. I think Maya Keeler would like nothing more than to be a puppy at your heels, if only you’d grant her permission. Your very own apprentice menace.

  I spotted Ms. McGuire marching toward us up the aisle. “Let him go,” I suggested to you.

  You let go, and Dowell clutched his throat and doubled over, gasping. But still he managed to tell you to go fuck yourself.

  You hauled him back upright by his hair.

  “Hey, Kurl,” I said, trying to tip you off about the librarian’s imminent arrival.

  You leaned right into Dowell’s face. “Now, why would I fuck myself,” you snarled, “when there’s a cunt like you?”

  You’d delivered the sentence calmly enough, your lips right next to Dowell’s ear. Your quiet-doom routine at its absolute finest. But when you uttered it, Ms. McGuire was standing all of two inches behind you.

  You will remember I once mentioned that there are certain vocabulary words that tend to backfire on those who wield them? Jonathan Hopkirk Defensive Plan, phase three: Hope They Hang Themselves with Their Own Rope. Remember?

  Well, the C-word would definitely qualify as one of those vocabulary words, Kurl. It’s right up there near the top of the list.

  The whole time you were choking Dowell, uttering those despicable words, listening to Ms. McGuire order you to the VP’s office, your face never betrayed the smallest hint of emotion. Not even a flicker.

  And seeing it—watching you stand there like a marble pillar while Ms. McGuire made Maya pick up the fallen books and then told the two of them to get lost so she could deal with you, watching you so carefully not glance over at me even once, not even when you slung your backpack over your shoulders and turned and walked out—I realized it’s a completely different face than the one to which I’ve
been getting accustomed. It was quite a jolt to see it and to remember that before we became friends, it’s the only face I ever saw.

  But my absolute favorite part of your letter is the passage about the glass orbs and the fascinating light patterns and the shattering into fragments. You’ve encapsulated the essence of my personality in a single, brilliantly elaborated metaphor. You’ve nailed it. You’ve got me in a nutshell.

  Here’s what I need you to do, Kurl. I need you to stop mixing me up in your head with yourself. Listen carefully now, because it’s an established fact in the Hopkirk household that I am at my most insightful when I’m at my angriest:

  Your glass ornament? It’s not me; it’s you.

  Go ahead, take as much time as you need to recover from this revelation and think it through. Your brilliant metaphor describes yourself. Adam Kurlansky lives inside a shell. A perfectly smooth, hard exoskeleton designed to ensure that no influences from the outside world can possibly penetrate, and nothing can ever escape.

  It is hardly a mystery why you wear this shell or where you perfected it. Just by way of a minor example, I am willing to bet any money that you borrowed this afternoon’s degrading use of the C-word directly from the mouth of Viktor Kurlansky. I’m assuming that what you meant in your letter by I’m just handing him an excuse is that Uncle Viktor’s going to holler at you for fighting at school again, and I’m willing to bet he won’t use the politest language when he does so, especially if he happens to have been sampling the vodka. There you go, Kurl: your complete, complimentary family psych assessment, courtesy of

  Yours truly,

  Jo

  Monday, December 7

  Dear Kurl,

  Aha. No letter from you in Ms. Khang’s box today. Nor are you present at school. Here we go again. I’m starting to believe that my interacting with you in any format is bad news for your plans to graduate from high school this year.

  Yours truly,